Word: wanda
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BABET SCHROEDER'S Barfly is about a charmingly diminutive bum named Henry Chinaski (Mickey Rourke), who frequents seedy East L.A. bars, gets into fights, and drinks constantly. He also falls in love with a ravaged but residually beautiful booze queen named Wanda (Faye Dunaway). They meet in a bar, drink, stagger around the streets, drink, go to bed together, get in fights, go to bed some more, and drink a whole lot more...
...alter ego Henry abruptly leaves the bed of the wealthy and beautiful young editor Tully Sorenson (Alice Krige). He tells her that she "lives in a cage with golden bars," and shambles back down the hill to the sordid. but politically correct furnished flat that he shares with Wanda...
...magnet persona in 9 1/2 Weeks. Here he's a sex symbol straight out of the Cuisinart, with his bloodstained tee shirts and battered face, and he remains likeable through the corniest moments. For all his apocalyptic late night poetry scribbling and implausible literary references, we can understand why Wanda and Tully fall in love with him, and even come to blows over him in (where else) a barroom...
Similarly, Dunaway's Wanda is a genuinely convincing waste case. She also manages the difficult feat of justifying Henry's initial impression of her as "some kind of distressed goddess." She doesn't overdo her star quality, either, avoiding the seductive trap of a 1940s melodrama performance. Even lines like "We're all in hell. And the madhouses are the only places where people know they're in hell" aren't too offensive coming from her--she has a sincerely manic edge to her that justifies her triteness...
Ralph: That's ten bucks for attacking Joe. Say, Wanda, does it seem dusty in here...