Fool for Love

1985 motel movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A dusty soap opera unfolds at a tacky desert motel.

First, I think I'm a sucker for movies that take place in motels, hotels, and Holiday Inns. I'm also probably a sucker for rap lyrics that contain the words "motels, hotels, Holiday Inns," but that's another subject. The Florida Project, Barton Fink, The Shining, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Somewhere in Time, Mystery Train. Some day, I need to make a list of favorite "hotel/motel" movies. Actually, I probably don't need to do that because I just did.

I'm also a sucker for Robert Altman's work, so in researching for an upcoming list of Best Movies of 1985 (capitalized only because it makes the whole thing seem more official), I couldn't just not see Altman's film from that year. This is still a few years before his reemergence as a director to take seriously, definitely not in his most fertile period as a filmmaker (though I do like O.C. and Stiggs), but this one is worth seeing. As a largely one-setting filmed version of co-star Sam Shepard's play, this had the potential to be a little stiff, but Altman keeps things cinematic from the opening shot, a long shot of this weird desert motel that makes the isolation of these characters we're about to meet palpable. There's something ghostly and mysterious about the whole thing, and the whole thing's set up as if it might be post-apocalyptic. Harry Dean Stanton stumbles out to play some harmonica, and the vibe is set.

Altman's eye really helps this thing flow, even more than the story or the dialogue. There's not much that you'd describe as flashy here, but there's a choreography with these desert soap opera characters--trucks arriving in window reflections, voyeuristic shots of characters through frames, characters popping into the background almost like they're doing it accidentally--that I really liked. The tacky motel neon lighting also adds to the mystery.

The Sandy Rogers-penned country and western songs help with that mystery, too. They're mostly played from Shepard's truck. Her voice is perfect for that pick-up and A.M. country radio, like transmissions from some whisky-stained, dilapidated town nobody wants to visit anymore because everybody's died in a coal-mining incident except for one radio disc jockey and the radio disc jockey's sun-baked bones. Tarantino used Rogers' title track in Reservoir Dogs, so that's where you know it from.

The story's a strange one, but its strangeness sneaks up on you. Shepard's screenplay gives you morsels that keep you guessing about the relationships of these characters, and when he eventually has those characters reveal exactly what's going on, it's almost enough to choke you. Or maybe even choke Sam Shepard's character's horse. The performances are exactly as good as they need to be. Kim Basinger is just the right mix of manic and stoic, and she brings a sexual allure that legitimizes everything that is going on with Shepard's character. Shepard's having some lanky fun as this cowboy, lassoing jukeboxes and damaging furniture. And Harry Dean Stanton plays that mostly-quiet bundle of mystery that he's so good at playing. He mostly stands around, leaning on things and sometimes chortling or playing that harmonica, and he blends in with the desert scenery so well that you really have doubts that the character exists as anything more than this ethereal specter with a good taste in haberdashery. He almost plays dual roles, but I wouldn't want to get into that for fear of spoiling surprises. Oh, and Randy Quaid is in there, too, much more suited for this kind of performance that I would have given him credit for.

There's at least one scene that left me confused about why it needed to be in the story, and some of the dialogue was a little too soap-operatic, but I thought Altman and company did a really good job of creating tension and this claustrophobia in this wide-open space filled with nothing but dust and regret. I guess that would be more agoraphobic, wouldn't it? Whatever it's called, the fear of all these possibilities of these hopelessly drifting characters is something that is very real during the last shots of the movie. These are characters who are free to leave whenever they want, but it's impossible for them to escape their own feelings which makes fleeing a useless endeavor. Cue the harmonica.