Word: goodbar
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LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR. Directed and Written by Richard Brooks
Writer-Director Brooks does not seem particularly interested in Keaton's Theresa, even though she appears in every scene. By switching the setting of Looking for Mr. Goodbar to a contemporary Any Town, U.S.A., Brooks has shifted the focus away from its protagonist. The book told the detailed saga of a troubled woman. The movie is a general diatribe against alleged American decadence: Brooks reduces the heroine's psychological background to a few broad strokes so that he can blithely blame her malaise on such irrelevant but cinematic phenomena as strip clubs, gay bars, TV game shows, strobe...
Looking for Mr. Goodbar has narrative lapses, jerky editing and confusing fantasy sequences that look like Ken Russell outtakes. Brooks' idea of style is to shoot Theresa in bright sunlight when she is being a good schoolteacher and in grim shadows when she is bedding down with her rough pickups. Though the movie was shot in color, the director's vision acknowledges only blacks and whites...
Indeed Tony's coital bouts with the heroine provide Looking for Mr. Goodbar with its few insightful scenes. When this couple make violent love, we can begin to understand the complex erotic passions that draw Theresa to her self-destructive double life. The rest of the film's brutality-its harsh language, its vicious climactic murder scene-are merely heavyhanded manifestations of Brooks' moral-mongering. The audience, not to mention Diane Keaton and Judith Rossner, deserve greater rewards in exchange for the punishment. - Frank Rich
...hard to see how two hours of viewing Diane Keaton as a nymphomaniac schoolteacher sets Looking for Mr. Goodbar apart from umpteen other films viewing women as prostitutes. In addition, if Diane's willingness to be photographed naked-"like a piece of meat"-falls under your writer's definition of modesty, what would he consider immodest? I guess her "la-de-dahs" cover a multitude of sins...