Desperately Seeking Susan was an instant hit. It had the quirkiness of the comedies of the '80s, a magnetic lead player in the young Rosanna Arquette and the who-cares-if-she-can-act-or-not star power of Madonna, riding the first wave of her superstardom. It won its opening weekend and went on to a very healthy first run cinema life. And if you see it, you will not wonder why.
The assumption in the leadup was that it was a star vehicle for Madonna who would be in the lead role. That might have promised great box office but didn't bode well for the film itself which at first sounded like a vanity project. It might have been the star power that gave it that initial rush but it was the movie itself that kept it going.
First, it's not Madonna/Susan in the lead but Arquette whose Roberta whose marriage to the dully narcissistic hot tub king Gary seems doomed to evaporation and for whom the intrigue of Susan and Jim seems more like life. While Gary interrupts his own cocktail parties for all his guests to see his home made ads on late night TV, Roberta cannot keep fading into the decor. This is another entry into the Yuppie Nightmare Cycle, also inhabited by Arquette in the recently reviewed After Hours. Susan is by far the better film.
Why? Susan Seidelman. The young director had already impressed with her Smithereens which got her into competition for the Palme D'Or at Cannes for its handling of a central character that only a mother could love such that audiences were rivetted rather than revolted. Here, she tones down the whackiness in fashion at the time for comedies and pushes forward Roberta's plight. For all the frenetic zaniness of Susan and Jim's chaos we see a steadily developing character, one who witnesses her own development as her recollection returns. She places herself in the kind of life that she probably wanted before she signed on to yuppiedom.
Arquette's career trajectory has kept her in work before and since Desperately Seeking Susan but this is her sole lead. That's a shame as the strength of her turn here carries the film. At a time when Reaganomics was creating tribes of self-entitled greed monsters, Arquette's farewell to the insubstantial Gary is quiet and poignant. And in scenes where the screwball comedy is given pause, she gives us strength.
Madonna, for her part, does not disgrace herself in the title role and emerges as perfectly engaging, possibly glad that the film was not an extension of her MTV career. Along with Richard Hell (also in Smithereens) she hits her marks and says her lines, conveying real personality. Aidan Quinn as Dez comes through as someone you'd want to know. There is moment early on when he notes that someone is carrying speakers down the stairs that look familiar and, getting to the next landing, shoots a rapid glance of concern which tells us everything about the scene to come. It's a small but naturalistic joke.
Mark Blum has the most thankless task in the role of the icky Gary, the husband who seems to think he has bought his way into a magazine lifestyle including his wife, he's all smiles and slime, saved by his unawareness of that from self destruction. Oh, something that doesn't carry well through time is the club scene where he is weirded out by the kerayzee dancers. Sorry folks, I know it's a tie in with Madonna 'n' all, but no club in 1985 that played Into the Groove would be anything but mainstream. Maybe it's a comment on how bubble-bound Gary is, but nah. It suffers from the same try hard flopping as the similar one in After Hours.
Desperately Seeking Susan deserves its place among the highpoints of '80s mainstream cinema. Seidelman's wise choice of avoiding the pitfalls of fashion allow it endurance as the story of a search by Roberta for herself. The comedy also undermines the solemnisation of this so that the point of Roberta's scission can have its moment strongly. Thus, in the best way, this is a great '80s movie because it does and doesn't give in.
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