Review of Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) by The Sean Leiter.... — 07 Jul 2008

This movie marks the beginning of Madonna's flirtation with acting. She mostly can't, you see; even here, she's pretty much just playing herself, which seems to be about what she's capable of. Her two best films ([i]A League of Their Own[/i] and [i]Evita[/i]) are also films where she's playing a version of herself, be it the young, wild woman of loose morals or the driven, ambitious woman who knows how to use her sexuality to her advantage. Here, she's the unpredictable woman who knows how to use her sexuality to her advantage. It doesn't mean she's doing a bad job. It just means she isn't really acting, per se.

Roberta Glass (Patricia Arquette) reads the personals. The one that intrigues her most is the frequent appearance of one "desperately seeking Susan." Eventually, she finds and follows Susan, and in one of those moments that can only happen in the movies, she gets amnesia and begins to think she is Susan. This leads to crazy chase sequences, smugglers, and men. Now that she's Susan, men find her wildly desirable. Her husband and Susan team up to find her, as Susan believes Roberta is trying to frame her for murder. The closing sequences rather have to be seen to be believed. Then again, the whole movie is pretty unbelievable.

It's not exactly [i]bad[/i], mind. It's just silly. It's also a prime example of two different sides of '80s fashion--Roberta and Gary (Mark Blum) are that scary '80s preppy type. At a party sequence early in the film, Roberta is wearing a dress that looks more like a frumpy nightgown, but it's okay, because so are all the other women. There is much big hair, too. On the other hand, there is Madonna, looking just as people my age remember her best. There's all the other protogoth fashions, too. You kids running around in black eyeliner should take note of this film; it's part of your cultural heritage. Not Madonna herself, exactly, but many of the people at the clubs Madonna patronizes. And, no, I [i]didn't[/i] dress like that. I was nine when this movie came out.

I list this as an action-adventure film, but it only just barely is. The smuggling is important to the story, broadly, but it feels as though they forget about it half the time. It's an explanation as to why everyone is in the position they're in, why Roberta received her blow to the head, why Susan is in danger. However, most of the movie is spent looking at what happens to Roberta when she thinks she's Susan. That brief walk in Susan's glittery boots changes her even after she regains her memory--and some of what happens afterward is even better.

In many ways, this movie is a tribute to '80s decadence. Gary sells bathtub spas. (We see the same commercial twice, in fact, but once in English and once in Spanish--clearly not fluent Spanish, either.) Susan seems to have no real means of support, but she's not hurting for clothes and clubs and drugs. No one in this movie seems to do any real work, even Gary. That spa store must run itself.