Edward Zwick's mid-'80s rom com is, on its surface, one of the most refreshing of its type from its time in that it prefers a more naturalist approach to the high-concept big screen quirk surrounding it. Moonstruck was exuberant, When Harry Met Sally was subversive, but About Last Night plays those traits down in prefence for a play-though of a young relationship, how the youth in it adds volatility, how the hard bits feel alienating and ugly.
And this approach is not suggested by the cast of then-rising young stars. Rob Lowe and Demi Moore in the centre show us constant vulnerability. Is this belied by a physical beauty that makes them magnetic on screen? Now, that's just price on the popcorn, these two are giving real performances. The darker undercurrents throughout are survivors of the adaptation by Tim Kazurinski Denise DeClue of David Mamet's original play. Mamet struck his digestible severity early and while the adaptors do add a lot of '80s sass they are respectful of the mechanics Mamet set up.
Elizabeth Perkins fits into her constant sass as though it's sprayed on. Jim Belushi as the boistrous Bernie is kept almost entirely at cardboard level. He's the most mid-'80s character of the entire cast with risque dialogue and claims of sexual exploits. He's closer to what a real Ferris Bueller would have been if John Hughes's star hadn't already made him a mainstream guardian. The spiky offsider was a staple and, while he's played down along with the rest of the cast, he's still only a double entendre away from the same role in Weekend at Bernies or Splash. Perkins' more passive and machine-like female counterpart to Moore's alpha girl Debbie fares a little smoother by the actor's own careful balancing.
Possessiveness, notions of pregnancy, total compatibility, double standards and more are inserted into the narrative but, unlike lesser efforts, these feel naturally discovered rather than shoehorned. The expection is the inevitable breaking point which feels, after everything we've seen them go through, the kind of contrivance that one of the other contemporary rom coms would insist on. Here it means that the bolstering of the two's unequal response to the scission must be industrial strength to merely play as narrative rather than emerge from it. The scene and aftermath suffer from anticlimax, as a result.
A bugbear of mine about American '80s representation of youth or young adulthood is the glaring AM radio hits that blare out at every point of silence in the scenes. This is to be expected in a film of its time and clime but it's just a thing I have about how mainstream American culture's lack of a punk period to shake it up, only ever got the vanilla knock off versions of punk and post punk. Think of how painstakingly careful the jukebox choices were made in Donnie Darko, it's almost all UK post punk pop. Then again, it was made in period costume; the times themselves were a lot more dire. I did say it was personal.
While the likes of Harry and Sally and Splash found descendants in the following decades, the kind of concerns of About Last Night morphed into the more serious fare like Blue Valentine. It's not a bad report card and it certainly says more for the heightened seriousness of the relationship movie and its place. About Last Night has a place. You might walk past it but the door is worth a knock.
Viewing notes: I hired this through Prime. You can still get the Blu-Ray for under $20. I'd recommend it for a freshener to any rom com playlist.
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