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Forever Lulu When cast right, Melanie Griffith is quite a show. As a schizo in Forever Lulu, she is close to her personal best—her talent for playing neurotics as space cadets comes through without excessive bathos. Her collagen lips less distracting than usual, she gives Lulu a purity of heart emerging from the turmoil inside, and she does it minus a lot of talkie, ticky nonsense. She’s blessed, too, by acting opposite Patrick Swayze, who, looking fit, ungrungy and writerish in glasses, hasn’t had much luck in getting parts in which he’s playing opposite the right kind of actress. Together as Lulu and Ben they still have a disquieting thing going on, even if they don’t really know why they were ever a couple, much less explain why they’ve gone cult over Robert Rossen’s The Hustler. (I’ll take Melanie’s brand of psychosis over Piper Laurie’s any day.) John Kaye, as director and writer, asks us to swallow way too quickly Ben’s disregard of obligation to traipse across the country with Lulu. He’s also a little shaky with the pivotal reunion scene; it’s supposed to be uncomfortable, and tension-filled, as such moments are (I met my father for the first time when I was 23), yet there are presumptuous remarks from the birth parents not ringing true. And the last scan of pictures might also be too happy-bound—though we accept their implicit meaning. Penelope Ann Miller and Steven Bauer have some quietly charged moments on a plane. Photographed in a most friendly fashion by Dion Beebe. With cameos by Michael J. Pollard and Nan Martin. AKA: Along for the Ride. Text COPYRIGHT © 2001 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved. |