Review of About Last Night... (1986) by Jake C — 29 Jul 2018

Maybe it was a mistake to have watched the remake before seeing the original (without ever having read or seen the play that both are based on, either). Beyond how much funnier, raunchier, and more frenetic the more recent version is than this one-reflective of the era's mores as much as anything else, when "sexual perversity" means something, uh, quite different (chicken costumes?) than just Jim Belushi womanizing-what really separates and elevates the newer movie is how it decenters and distributes the narrative emphasis. That is to say, whereas the newer iteration stars in (relatively) equal measure the four leads, entangling their stories so that the viewer is invested in each, here the film is pretty solely focused on Rob Lowe's character, an utterly typical young white male who is too socially awkward to capitalize on his "true" virile masculinity.

Yet in this classical fantasy form, the movie also serves to illustrate a very Lacanian sense of subjectivity: On an Imaginary level, this is a romance about two beautiful people seeking to disentangle and realize the (impossibility of a) perfect sexual relationship; yet on a Symbolic level, their struggle is really the story of their social networks, the support they get from their friends, who function in turn as a maternal super-ego and primordial father ideal-ego. In closing the gap between, by sexually bringing together, mother and father, super-ego and id, the ego is magically repaired and overcomes the Oedipal conflict.