Bring Back Bridget Fonda: Singles [12]

DIR: Cameron Crowe
CAST: Campbell Scott, Kyra Sdegwick,
Bridget Fonda,Matt Dillon

Cameron Crowe's second film as writer and director (following a classic debut in Say Anything) is quite a curious thing; it's so evocative of a specific time, and yet it has ideas and moments that will resonate with any audience, even those born after the cultural context in which the film takes place had run its course. Nearly 20 years on from its release, and probably 15 years since I last saw it, Singles played not as dated but as nostalgic.

The film is set in an apartment complex - a set of 18 single units - in Seattle in the early 90's and charts the ups and downs of the relationships of the people living there. Among them are Steve (Scott), a yuppie with a looming important presentation; Janet (Fonda), a sweet girl so hopelessly in love with her musician boyfriend Cliff (Dillon) that she's considering a breast enlargement so that he'll be more attracted to her and Debbie (Sheila Kelley), a brassy maneater who hires a director for her video dating ad. We also meet some people from outside the apartment complex, notably Linda (Sedgwick), who Steve meets at a concert and swiftly begins dating.

Singles is, like a lot of great films, about things that, in the grand scheme of events, are small, but which feel huge for the people living them. That's probably best expressed by Janet's story. Cameron Crowe's script paints her as a girl to whom the little things are terribly important; notably the moment that she realises that her insensitive boyfriend doesn't say 'bless you' when she sneezes. In other hands this might come off as annoyingly twee, but writes her and Bridget Fonda plays her, as a creature of simple sincerity, and rather than irksome she's actually adorable. At one point in the film, Campbell Scott's Steve says of a girl he's just met 'If I had a personal conversation with God, would ask him to create this girl', and at a certain point I found it hard not to feel that about Janet. Obviously she looks like Bridget Fonda, which is a fine starting point, but what really makes her so lovable is the way she reacts at her lowest point. Even as she's deciding whether or not to have (totally unnecessary) breast surgery, she sees that someone else (the surgeon accessing her, played by Bill Pullman) is feeling down, and is kind and funny and sweet to him even at that moment. I love Janet, and I love Bridget Fonda's performance because you believe in that fundamental goodness she gives the character.

It's not as if Fonda is alone though, all the performances are excellent. In the lead Campbell Scott is quietly brilliant as Steve; who seems to mask real insecurity with outward self confidence, but, for the most part, do it well enough that people don't see the mask. It's a testament to how fine an actor Scott is that he's able to communicate this to the audience while credibly not letting other characters in. Along with Crowe he also crafts a guy who is desperate for connection, in a way that feels much more real to me now than when I last saw Singles aged 15. It's both sad and funny how recognisable Steve is. Matt Dillon has done a lot of nice work over the years, but when somebody says his name to me the first thing that always comes to mind is Cliff Poncier; stuck up singer of middling grunge band Citizen Dick (who are filled out by members of Pearl Jam). He's incredibly slappable in the role, largely because the girlfriend he's so inattentive to is the adorable Janet, but again, though it's a smallish part, Cliff isn't a caricature, Crowe's script begins, late in the day, to peel back this guy's layers and show the slow process of his realisation of how he's behaved, and of course up to that point Cliff's always good for a laugh, especially when he's talking about the title of his band's signature song 'Touch me I'm Dick' to a journalist played by Crowe.

The film's women fare slightly less well, with Kyra Sedgwick (another in this films veritable parade of underrated actors) has perhaps the least defined character, which is odd given that she's really the female lead, Crowe's written an independent 90's woman here, who isn't sure if she wants commitment, or even a relationship, when she falls into something serious with Steve, but she's not very specific, feeling more of a type than a really rounded character. Her flipside is Debbie; Sheila Kelley's hilarious, orange haired, man hungry caricature. She's a cartoon, but Kelley plays the cartoon to perfection, never more so than in her dating video, and while Debbie isn't terribly real she's certainly a good deal of fun.

Of course one of the defining features of all of Crowe's movies is the use of music (from the sublime moment with In Your Eyes in Say Anything to the ridiculous road trip soundtrack in Elizabethtown). Singles doesn't have a single iconic musical moment, but weaves the Seattle grunge scene through the movie as the characters experience it; as he soundtrack of their lives. It meant little to me last time I saw the film, because music only became a big part of my life in my 20's, but on this viewing it leapt out at me how the music - the songs and the score by Paul Westerberg - becomes a character, tying the people and the setting together. If you're informed about the scene there are also a lot of treats scattered through the film in the form of cameos from the aforementioned Pearl Jam, to Alice in Chains playing in a dingy club, to Chris Cornell (of Soundgarden) as a friend of Cliff's and probably more I didn't spot. Speaking, by the way, of cameos, Singles is packed with 'it's that guy' moments, all of which are fun; Paul Giamatti has one line, Jeremy Piven and Eric Stoltz have one scene each, Tim Burton plays the director of Debbie's dating video and Bill Pullman is notable as Janet's smitten plastic surgeon.

The main thing I really liked about Singles this time out was the tone. It's reflective, but never melancholy. It's funny, but never knockabout or silly. It's serious, but never solemn. The dialogue, in typical Crowe style, is specific, smart, sharp and witty (Janet: People need people, Steve. It has nothing to do with sex. OK, maybe 40 percent. 60 percent. Forget it.) I also like its untidiness, Crowe isn't afraid to let the loose ends hang as the credits roll, we get a sense of where things might go, but this isn't a biography, it's a glimpse of a few months in a few people's lives, and that means that things aren't neat, because things aren't over. It would be interesting, I think, to revisit these characters, to find out who they are in their mid 40's, whether they still know each other, if Janet's still so sweet, if Cliff's still making music, that, to me, would be far more interesting than Thor 2, or Ice Age 4.

Bring Back Bridget Fonda: Touch [15]

DIR: Paul Schrader
CAST: Skeet Ulrich, Bridget Fonda,
Christopher Walken, Tom Arnold

Touch is a bizarre film. It's got a weird cast, a tone that feels slightly off and a director who appears not to have quite decided which of two possible films he's actually going to make. This definitely means that Touch is no lost classic, but it also means that it's never uninteresting, because it always keeps you on your toes.

The film revolves around a young former missionary named Juvenal (Ulrich, who looks so eerily like Johnny Depp you suspect he might be a life size action figure) whose apparent stigmata and powers of miraculous healing attract the attention of Bill Hill (Walken), a former church owner who now sells RV's for a living. In order to speak with Juvenal, Hill sends his friend Lynn (Fonda) undercover to the alcohol rehab centre in which he works. Juvenal and Lynn become friends, then lovers, while around them people vie to exploit Juvenal's gift.

Watching it for probably the first time in a decade, I was struck by the fact that there is something of a tug of war going on to determine what kind of movie Touch will be. Is it the relatively serious minded movie documenting Juvenal's relationship with Lynn? Or is it the knockabout comedy that contributors like Tom Arnold, Lolita Davidovich and Walken are performing in? Paul Scrader never quite seems able to choose one or the other, and the mix is often uneasy, especially when the two collide.

In and of themselves though, both sides of Touch work nicely. In the comedy, Walken leads the cast, turning in a deliciously loopy performance, even more packed with odd inflections than his work tends to be. I like the details of his character too, the affectations like the huge gold chain that says 'Thank You Jesus' (ripped right from the source novel by Elmore Leonard). We really should hate Bill, he's no more than a cynical guy out for a buck, but Walken's profound strangeness is hard not to love. Tom Arnold also plays it broad as the leader of a group that wants to restore the latin mass to churches throughout the US, but he's less able to get away with it, because the character isn't really crazy enough to be funny, nor crazy enough to be threatening. However, there are plenty of laughs in Touch, be it the simple visual of the fact that the first thing we see a formerly blind housewife do when her sight is restored is begin sweeping up the dishes her husband has just broken, or Gina Gershon's brassy, up to 11 performance as a small time talk show host.

For me though, though it is less explored, the drama here is what is compelling. Juvenal is an intriguing character; a true innocent in many respects, but one who isn't naive. That's a rather fine line to walk, and Ulrich (despite being a bit young for the part) walks it well. You also see why Lynn would be attracted to him (aside from the fact that he looks like a young Johnny Depp, which I'm told helps) he's kind and gentle and unassuming, and these seem to be qualities that the initially pricklier Lynn wants to take from him. Fonda and Ulrich also exhibit nice chemistry together, and their friendship, which grows into romance, feels quite genuine (as I've mentioned before in this series, I imagine this is something that you can put down to the innate warmth Fonda projects on screen, even though she's somewhat muting it here, as if Lynn's dissatisfaction with her work and long association with con artist Bill have muted it in her). Neither performance has any great actorly moments, nothing showy is going on here, but that works to the benefit of the story, you buy into these two as simple, human, characters, which is remarkable in a film so otherwise full of cartoony personalities.

Touch is unfocused and doesn't really come together, but moments, scenes and performances work well on their own merits. It has ideas, but doesn't always communicate them totally successfully. It can be a frustrating watch, but at least it's a film that is reaching for something, even if it ultimately misses.

Bring Back Bridget Fonda: Doc Hollywood [12]

DIR: Michael Caton Jones
CAST: Michael J. Fox, Julie Warner, David Ogden Stiers,
Woody Harrelson, Bridget Fonda

It's a strange film to have an attachment to, but I will always have a bit of a soft spot for Doc Hollywood, if only because it was where I first saw breasts. Thanks, Julie Warner. Memorable moments for an eleven year old aside, however, the film does have other things going for it.

This is a Capraesque tale of a young surgeon (Fox) who is waylaid on his way to a big plastic surgery job interview in LA when he crashes his car, demolishing the fence of a small town judge. He's sentenced to community service as the town's doctor, and immediately all the residents begin working to try and ensure that he stays there. There's romance with the local ambulance driver (Warner) and a flirtation with the Mayor's daughter (Fonda) makes one of the locals (Harrelson) very jealous.

Doc Hollywood is gently funny, and doesn't lack for charm, but it's hard to shake the feeling that it's a little empty. Michael J. Fox was never the world's best actor, but he can be magnetic, unfortunately he's not great here, he's a little miscast as a soon to be high flying doctor who is more than a bit of an asshole, but worse he just seems to be coasting here, and the growing relationship between him and Julie Warner - who is perfectly good as Lou the ambulance driver, but is outshone by another performance we'll come to - never really convinces.

What works better is the depiction of this bible belt town and its inhabitants. The script and direction poke gentle fun, never pretending that this depiction of Grady is of a real place as much as it is of a romantic cinematic vision of a small town. Though the characterisations are broad, outside of the rather drippy main story, everyone is having fun. David Ogden Stiers is blustery and funny as the mayor desperate to keep this new doctor in town, while Woody Harrelson does his patented 'amusingly dim, while a side of menace' thing to perfection.

Bridget Fonda reunites with director Michael Caton-Jones, who gave her a big break in Scandal two years before. Here she plays the mayor's flirty and oversexed daughter, who wants Fox to take her away from the provincial life to the bright lights of LA (and this, for me, is where the story strains credulity, because really, who could resist?) It would have been easy for this role to have been played as no more than a punchline, but as ever Fonda invests her character with a real spark, she's effortlessly likable, and that as much as her beauty makes her a much more interesting potential match than Warner. Saddled with a thankless role, Fonda makes much more of it than was likely on the page, it's both one the film's greater qualities and eventually one of its greater failings.

You'd be hard pressed to dislike Doc Hollywood, it's too amiable for that, and for all its problem it is frequently funny, and its gentle charm does end up rubbing off on you, even if, at the end of the day, you know it's not especially brilliant.

Bring Back Bridget Fonda: Introduction

Welcome to Bring Back Bridget Fonda. Over the next couple of weeks, across both of our sites (and a few special features at MultiMediaMouth, where we both also write) Michael Ewins and I will be starting a campaign for the return of the charming, beautiful and talented Bridget Fonda to the world's cinema screens. We've got reviews, features and collaborative pieces coming your way over the next two weeks as we take a look at a career that seems to have come to a very premature end. We're unashamedly taking the perspective of fans, but don't worry, we're not abandoning our critical faculties, and we're well aware that even people we love sometimes make crappy movies.

If you're also a Bridget Fonda fan (good chance really, since you've read this far), then join the campaign. Send us an email at sam@24fps.org.uk or darjeeling_myworld@yahoo.com. Tweet us on @24FPSUK or @darjeelingmike. Or, if you're also a writer, join in; write up a blog entry and send us a link, we'll showcase whatever we can and we're looking forward to hearing from you. Let's get this done so Mike and I can retire to the home for fully contented humans.

We weren't quite sure how to kick this feature off, so we decided just to have a chat about why we decided to mount this campaign. Here's what was said...

Sam Inglis: Well, I guess the whole thing came about while you and I were talking about movies and blogging and plans for our sites, and I happened to mention to you that I'd been planning, but not quite got round to, writing a series called "Bring Back Bridget Fonda".

Michael Ewins: Which I was instantly on board with because I was (and still am) a huge Bridget Fonda fan. It was just one of those great moments where you're talking with somebody who's as passionate about films as you are and you find a point you totally agree on. For us it was Bridget Fonda.

Sam Inglis: It's something that's really bugged me, because she vanished both just as she was becoming a really great actress, and as I was becoming, having grown up seeing (often illicitly) her films, a really big fan.

Michael Ewins: It's the same for me. I was 11 when she retired and was a huge fan of 'It Could Happen To You', which was a film I became very attached to in my youth as it's very idealistic and romantic. As I got a little older I discovered some of her more adult work and was very sad to discover that she'd retired, pretty much the moment that I'd discovered her.


Sam Inglis: For me she was an actress, rather like her contemporary and one time co-star Jennifer Jason Leigh, that I only slowly realised how much I liked her. For a while I hadn't noticed that this attractive girl in Singles, and Single White Female, and The Assassin, and It Could Happen to You, and Doc Hollywood, and Scandal and a few others was the same girl and it was then that I started tracking her work down deliberately.

Michael Ewins: Singles was the one that really unlocked it for me. I was at that point where the mindset of those characters really clicked with me, I was starting to see reflections in my own life. They were ten years older than me but the collective voice was really powerful, and Fonda just stood out. She's so lovable in that film. After that I saw her in The Assassin and the transformation just blew my mind. Looking back, that was around the same time I was considering being an actor. There were more conscious influences I can list you as to why I wanted to do that, but I'm sure Fonda was just as important as any of them, for her versatility and screen presence. It was her films I watched most over the course of my dramatic education, certainly.

Sam Inglis: I don't love The Assassin, as I recall it it's a very close and rather weaker remake of Nikita, but you're right about her performance, she's doing a lot of her own stunt work and the ferocity that you see from her in that film, especially as compared to the sweet, insecure, girl in Singles, is really an impressive transformation. But as much as her acting, and she was always good and only got better, there's something else to why I liked her so much on screen, and why I really miss her, and that's just her presence. Movie stars have something innate, something that draws you to them, however interesting their character may or may not be, however good the film is or isn't, you can't take your eyes off a movie star, and she's got that in spades.

Michael Ewins: Absolutely, and it probably originates with her parents. People forget that her first screen appearance was as a child in 'Easy Rider', perhaps the most revolutionary film of the 1960s. That presence probably comes from being born into a time in American cinema where nobody really cared about the rules or commerce but made art, and they made it with passion and soul. In 1987 she was in Aria, which is a portmanteau film with directors as diverse as Ken Russell and Jean-Luc Godard, and that's probably where some of the ferocity comes from too. Working with very uncompromising and ambitious people, and living with them, pretty much from being a toddler. She was directed by Francis Ford Coppola when she was 26, for Godfather Part III. The presence comes from a natural root in the history of cinema, and how many other actresses can boast that?

Sam Inglis: It's easy to charge third generation actors like her with nepotism, but honestly I think here early work; the fearless, literally naked, turn in Aria in particular, gave the lie to that charge from the start. It's interesting you mention Godfather III as well, that's not a great movie, but again, I just found her to be one of the most interesting things in it, negotiating that relationship with Andy Garcia just as he's on the rise in the mob.

But you're probably right that she gets a lot from her dad in particular, she's talked about both him and her grandfather Henry Fonda as big inspirations in the past. But I just want to go back and pick up something you mentioned about Singles... noting how lovable she is (and she really is) in that movie. That's something else I often find with her performances, and too in the interviews I've seen with her, there seems to be a genuine warmth about her, something else that just leaps off the screen. It's especially felt in Singles, and It Could Happen to You, but for me it's a very important part of Single White Female, in the way she relates to Jennifer Jason Leigh's character.

Michael Ewins: I agree, and Single White Female is a great example of how that warmth is kind of manipulated and used to quite unconventional effect, because that's a dark film. I think she always challenged that warmth as well, with a wide variety of roles. The Assassin comes to mind again, as a film which has you rooting for her but is defiantly antagonstic in terms of star persona. Everything about her in that film is dangerous and spiky, but you're engaged just as much by her as you were when she played the perky character in 'It Could Happen To You', where I've never loved her more. Her career seems somewhat built on always doing what you least expect her to do, right up to the 2001 double bill of Monkeybone and Kiss Of The Dragon. It's amazing really, to consider how natural a screen presence she is, and how she flits between genres and characters but retains that indescribable allure.

Sam Inglis: Well, and it's amazing we have managed not to touch on this for as long as this, it has to be said that part of that allure is down to the fact that she is - even in Hollywood terms - unreasonably good looking, and has a smile that could light up a city.


Michael Ewins: Absolutely, she's stunningly beautiful, but in a very natural way. You never get the sense that she wanted to be seen as a glamour queen or something, she looks quite plain (or as plain as she can be) in many of her roles. She's not like, for example, Angelina Jolie, who plays super spies who look like they've had hair and makeup done between every take. Fonda's is just a radiant beauty. An honest one, if you will. She normally played the average person you'd see on the street, and she's the sort of person you'd stop dead in your tracks if they walked past you. It's that kind of beauty.

Sam Inglis: And that's used to tremendous advantage in Singles, because it's so nonsensical that her boyfriend wants her to change her body to become some sort of ideal.

Anyway, I think we should talk briefly about her retirement, and for me the tragedy of it is that she did so much great work in the years just before it, and was only getting better; Jackie Brown, Touch, A Simple Plan and then... gone.

Michael Ewins: Definitely. A Simple Plan especially is worth noting as it's probably her best performance. She's part of a really solid trio there and once again you just totally believe her character and are warmed by her. Perhaps it's because she's kind of the moral voice in that film, and she really nails that central dilemma the film proposes - she kind of channels the audiences feelings, if I remember rightly. I can't imagine any other actress in that role, and the same can be said for her brief but hugely memorable appearance in Jackie Brown. I mean, she's kind of like the punchline for an effective joke, but it wouldn't be half as funny without the deadpan, cynical, eye-rolling bikini-girl performance she put in before Tarantino gets there.

Sam Inglis: I love her in Jackie Brown, and for me it's a perfect example of how great she is, because it's such a thin role; she basically lounges half dressed on a sofa the entire time, smoking a bong, but what she gets out of Melanie is incredible, you actually get a real sense of her, she's more rounded and more human than most movie characters in mainstream American cinema in the last 5 years, with that little to work with.

Michael Ewins: Absolutely. Ironic actually, that she's probably one of Tarantino's most human characters and she has the least to say. But that's what Fonda can do with a role. She physically and mentally embodies them so even if they're on screen smoking a bong for two minutes, you're engaged by them.

Sam Inglis: So we know what she's doing in retirement, and you have to be happy for her; she's married to Danny Elfman and a full time parent to their son, and that's lovely, but other Hollywood parents still make movies, and it seems a terrible waste to not have her on screen anymore. And yet, she's 47 now (and still, at least as recently as the Inglourious Basterds première, as beautiful as ever) and there's not much for a 47 year old actress to do in Today's Hollywood, and I don't want to have her back after a decade just so she can play Jonah Hill's mom and glare disapprovingly at him in three scenes. That's beneath her. What someone needs to do is write her an amazing lead in an indie script, give her something she can't resist (and can win a long deserved Oscar for).

Michael Ewins: Definitely. It would be tragic to see her come back in supporting roles which actresses of her age so often get. It's a tough market at the best of times, but she's been out of the business for nearly ten years now, and I don't see what would be available to her considerable talents. An entire generation growing up now won't know who she is, because she's been away for a decade.

Well, without further ado, let's get going, we'll have the first review in the series ready for you tomorrow, and do please be sure to check back in with the sites for new content every day over the next fortnight.