Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner

The performance creates a character who would have been unthinkable in the movies of thirty years ago: A young woman who spends her days teaching first grade to a classroom of deaf-mutes and her nights making herself available in singles bars. Brooks and Keaton must have worked together to create such a great performance it's just a shame that it's surrounded by perhaps half an hour of material that only distracts. And it's not fair to praise her while damning Brooks (as so many critics have done). Goodbar' is very much worth seeing, particularly for the Diane Keaton performance.

And her home life - its broadly painted Freudian details right out of soap operas - could have just simply been dropped.īut, all the same, Brooks hasn't directed a bad picture. Theresa's fantasies, for example, are handled in ways that annoy viewers more than they intrigue them. He has rewritten the story, in any event, into a cautionary lesson: Promiscuous young women who frequent pick-up bars and go home with strangers are likely to get into trouble.īrooks hasn't improved the story by changing its focus, and he's distracted from the heart of the narrative by several unnecessary scenes. Maybe Brooks thought audiences would find Rossner's masochistic heroine too hard to understand. But she isn't looking for danger, mistreatment, or death. She's looking for a combination of good times, good sex, and a father figure, for psychological reasons the movie makes all too abundantly clear. He gives us a Theresa who drinks too much, sleeps around too much, and takes too many drugs - but she seems more of a hedonist than a masochist. In Richard Brooks's film version, that masochistic impulse isn't considered as openly. Theresa was turned on to a particular flavor of self-destructive sexual experience, one involving possible danger to herself, and she played a role in bringing about her own death. The heroine of Judith Rossner's bestseller was looking. Goodbar doesn't necessarily mean you were looking for him. Goodbar' doesn't make clear: Just because you find Mr.

There's one crucial thing that 'Looking for Mr.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner