Word: gena
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Minnie Moore (Gena Rowlands) works in the Los Angeles County Art Museum and is involved in a dead-end affair with a married man. She spends a lot of time at the movies too, doting on the soft-focus images of her dreams. "Florence," she tipsily confides to a friend late one night, "I never had a Charles Boyer in my life." Instead, she gets Seymour Moskowitz, who pursues her with the fierce dedication of a sans-culotte storming the Bastille. His final victory makes for one of the rarest screen events: a believable and totally appropriate happy ending...
...Gena Rowlands (Mrs. Cassavetes) brings a poignancy and complexity to Minnie that makes hers one of the memorable performances of the year. Cassel is full of dizzying charm and whirling-dervish energy. As always with Cassavetes' films, there are cameo roles so rich they could each make a movie in themselves: Val Avery as a loudmouthed date of Minnie's, Tim Carey as a poetry-spouting bum who disdains the movies ("A lot of lonely people sitting there looking up at a screen-what do I need that for?"). But almost stealing the show from these pros...
...Where d'ya get $25,000? Sell women? Marijuana? Hustle yourself all over the street? Small time!") and about his companions ("Fags!"). Then he cuts out to do the job on his own. Along the route to the ritual slaughter, McCain meets an old girl friend (Gena Rowlands), a new wife (Britt Ekland) and enough unsavory characters to provide a neat 94 minutes of bloodshed and nastiness...
Falk has a splendid time either muscling the opposition in Vegas or quaking before the elegant threats of a capo from New York. Gena Rowlands (Mrs. Cassavetes outside the movies) does the tough-but-tender-broad routine with such wistful sexiness that her heart of gold is almost 24-carat. When she and Cassavetes play a boisterous reunion scene, the film, however briefly, is transformed from flyweight entertainment into something true and touching...
...performers are generally outstanding, especially Gena Rowlands as the call girl, John Marley as the husband and Lynn Carlin as the forlorn and suicidal wife (it is her first professional role). Cassavetes' hand-held cameras move from closeup to unsparing closeup with the agility of a spectator's shifting eye-a spectator, moreover, who must constantly feel that he is committing an invasion of privacy. It is to the film's credit that Faces evokes a slight sense of guilt: the viewer keeps watching, even when he ought to avert his eyes...