X
- 1985
- R
- Cannon Film Distributors
- 1 h 46 m
- 1985
- R
- Cannon Film Distributors
- 1 h 46 m
Summary May is waiting for her boyfriend in a run-down American motel, when an old flame turns up and threatens to undermine her efforts and drag her back into the life that she was running away from. The situation soon turns complicated.
Directed By: Robert Altman
Written By: Sam Shepard
- 1985
- R
- Cannon Film Distributors
- 1 h 46 m
- 1985
- R
- Cannon Film Distributors
- 1 h 46 m
Fool for Love
64
User Score
Available after 4 ratings
tbd
Where to Watch
Summary May is waiting for her boyfriend in a run-down American motel, when an old flame turns up and threatens to undermine her efforts and drag her back into the life that she was running away from. The situation soon turns complicated.
Directed By: Robert Altman
Written By: Sam Shepard
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 12 Critic Reviews
64
42% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
58% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 12 Critic Reviews
64
42% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
58% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
It’s a raw, explosively funny, elemental tragicomedy about the pure willfulness of love...Basinger is the movie’s revelation. She makes May a jumpy, juicy, full-tilt, sensuous creature. Scrubbing in exasperation at the tendrils of hair that cloud her face, clamping herself to Eddie’s leg like a blond barnacle, she has her own funny side too, but what you remember most is May’s longing, so deep it’s torn her up inside.
It's a good ol' boy version of "Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf?," but
whereas that classic had four characters in direct conflict, "Fool for Love"
essentially is a two-character duel to the quick.
Fool for Love has several exceptional things going for it, namely the performances by Mr. Shepard as Eddie, Kim Basinger as May and Harry Dean Stanton as the Old Man.
Robert Altman directs a fine cast with all the authority and finesse a good play deserves, so it's too bad the play fooled them all. Sam Shepard's drama of intense, forbidden love in the modern West is made to seem like specious stuff filled with dramatic ideas left over from the 1950s.
The perverse story of a randy cowboy (played by Shepard himself) and his sister/lover Kim Basinger needs the tension of live performance for its incest-as-metaphor diagram to pop out.
You'd think that if anybody could film Sam Shepard's 1983 play and keep it metaphorical and rowdy and sexually charged it would be the intuitive Robert Altman, but the material seems to congeal on the screen, and congealed rambunctiousness is not a pretty sight.
FOOL FOR LOVE is a great play, and the performances from the cast are solid--especially Stanton's and Shepard's--but as a film the whole thing seems rather contrived and stiff.
User Reviews
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Production Company
Cinema '84,
The Cannon Group
Release Date Dec 6, 1985
Duration 1 h 46 m
Rating R
Genres
Tagline Desire beyond the edge of passion.
Awards
Festróia - Tróia International Film Festival
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Cannes Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
Turkish Film Critics Association (SIYAD) Awards
• 1 Nomination
