Word: misses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...forthcoming, they are neatly sidestepped. When Cathy Cake (Jessica Harper), the seductive and immorally ambitious, aspiring starlet confronts The Boy Wonder, demanding to know why he has been reduced to such a pitiful ghost of his former self, he glibly replies that he is not scared of anything. When Miss Cake presses for an answer, an explanation is anticipated. But instead of pouring out his story, The Boy Wonder breaks down in tears and the mystery remains. Given Byrum's weakness for cliches, perhaps it is better that he avoids giving an overt answer. Such a revelation probably would have...
...need for gratification that drives him to make "five-and-dime films" when he has been forced from "real films." In a confrontation with Cathy Cake he is made to face the full reality of his impotence. When he does in fact, through the guiles of the seductive Miss Cake, get his "rope" to "rise" he simultaneously deflates his compulsion to make films. Nonetheless, Dreyfuss's success is not completed, for while his inability to cope has been conquered on a symbolic level, there is still a lingering doubt about real life...
...Will. I Will ...For Now is about as low as they come, and Miss Keaton must work hard at playing a neurotic contemporary woman trying to reconcile with her husband (Elliott Gould). Divorced, but unhappy about it, Keaton and Gould attempt a trial reconciliation, a marriage by contract. "Living with her is like living with a Lysol commercial/' grouses Gould to the family lawyer (Paul Sorvino), who has been enjoying a weekly liaison with Keaton. The lawyer would like to marry her himself, and makes the terms of the marriage contract so tough that he figures the relationship will...
...Miss Keaton does not so much rise above all this as defy it. Looking a little like the White Rock girl with a degree from Sarah Lawrence, Keaton coaxes and brasses her way through her role. At one point, she must remark of the floozy upstairs, who sports low necklines and is bedeviled by brown supermarket bags that disintegrate from below, "Oh, her cantaloupes are always falling out." Keaton pays so little mind to the awkwardness of the line, to its prewashed vulgarity, that she makes it charming. Talent like that goes beyond skill; it is a kind of bonkers...
Bemused Talents. Besides the quite ravishing Miss Fabian, the movie can boast the presence of Marcello Mastroianni as Nicholas. He is not seen in major movies as widely as he used to be, so Salut I'Artiste is, if nothing else, a wholly welcome reminder of just how extraordinary an actor he can be. It would seem folly to cast Mastroianni as a nonentity were it not for his wonderfully bemused talents for self-effacement. Many of his best performances (8½, say, or The Organizer) have challenged and contradicted the popular notion of him as a kind...