Review of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) by Edith N — 07 Apr 2007

Before she was Iris. Before she was Tallulah. Before she was Annable Andrews. Long, long before she was Clarice Starling or Betty the Talking Tattoo. After she was Samantha, though, and after she was on quite a lot of bad 70s TV ([i]Mayberry, R.F.D.[/i]?), she was Audrey. Funnily enough, while most of her early career was spent on episodes of TV shows based on movies, she wasn't on [i]Alice[/i]. Go figure.

I never watched [i]Alice[/i] when I was a kid. I thought it looked dumb. I've never seen it; maybe I'm wrong. But most people who've seen both apparently [i]don't[/i] see the connection. Well, the same guy plays Mel. But that kinda doesn't count, does it?

The movie Alice has escaped an awful marriage only because her husband dies. Her kid, who's an obnoxious little punk who apparently drove Martin Scorcese nuts (the kid was, by all accounts, about as obnoxious as the character he played), rather accurately notes that she doesn't really seem sad about it. Her husband was a jerk--though he is better than Harvey Keitel, the next man she hooks up with.

Eventually, she's in Tucson, Arizona, working in a diner and living in a motel. The obnoxious kid ends up in guitar lessons with Jodie Foster's Audrey, who drinks Ripple and says (probably rightly, though we're never to know for certain) that her mother is a prostitute turning tricks at the Holiday Inn. She is left to decide if she can find love with Kris Kristofferson, whose name has always annoyed me.

This is a deep, subtle portrayal of one woman's choices--and the places where her choices are made for her. And aren't we all, in some way, just trying to get to Monterey?