24FPS Top 100: No.53

53: FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH [1982]
DIR: Amy Heckerling

Why is it on the list?
In 1982, three raunchy American teen comedies came out. Porkys was ribald, and held the promise of loads of nudity, The Last American Virgin - while interesting - never quite reconciled its comedic first and dramatic second halves, but Fast Times at Ridgemont High got it just right. The backstory is quite famous now. Aged 22, Caameron Crowe, then a journalist for Rolling Stone, returned to high school for a year to research a novel. That novel (notes for which were often taken, apparently, during frequent bathroom breaks at parties) became Crowe's first screenplay, and fortunately for Crowe and debuting director Amy Heckerling it came to Hollywood just when a glut of young talent was also arriving.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High IS the 80's, aside from the brat packers, everyone is in it. Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Nicolas Cage, Eric Stoltz, Forrest Whitaker, Amanda Wyss and Anthony Edwards are all familiar names, and then the cast is filled out by 'oh, it's THAT guy' actors like Scott Thomson, Robert Romanus, Brian Backer, Ray Walston and Vincent Schiavelli. It's a great cast, and it's easy to see why such talent gravitated towards the film (well, leaving aside the ever present need of young actors to no longer be living on their best friend's floor), because the screenplay gives them all sharply defined (even archetypal in some cases) characters, and fantastic dialogue, as well as an effective mix of comedy and drama to play. That's perhaps why it's such a joy to watch, because you can see how much fun everyone is having, how much they are enjoying these characters and these words.

This is especially true of the two leads. Sean Penn is now known as an incredibly intense and serious dramatic actor, but here, in his first really significant role, he's playing Jeff Spicoli; the stoned surfer dude that every stoned surfer dude since, in movies or otherwise, has to live up to. He brought his customary intensity to the set; insisting that everyone call him Spicoli, even when they called him at home, but his on screen performance is totally relaxed, and hilariously funny (perhaps more so now, viewed through the prism of 30 years of absolute seriousness). His rivalry with Ray Walston's authoritarian history teacher Mr Hand is the comedic gift that just keeps on giving from the beginning of the film ("You DICK") to the end ("What Jefferson was saying was, Hey! You know, we left this England place 'cause it was bogus; so if we don't get some cool rules ourselves - pronto - we'll just be bogus too! Get it?"). And then there is Jennifer Jason Leigh, also in her first really significant role. Ever the method actress, Leigh got a job at the exact pizza place where her character works, and worked there for a month between getting the part and filming. She doesn't so much act Stacy - the most challenging role in the film, as she has the most happen to her, and does the most growing up in the course of the story - as become her. She does this so completely that, when reviewing the film, Roger Ebert asked; 'How could they do this to Jennifer Jason Leigh? How could they put such a fresh and cheerful person into such a scuz-pit of a movie?' Now, I'm sure he's right that Leigh is 'fresh and cheerful', but one thing the last 30 years made clear she's not is delicate, or afraid of immersing herself in a scuzzy world for the good of a movie. What Ebert's done here, essentially, is mistake the actress for the character. That is how good she is here.

But I don't want to get too serious here, because Fast Times doesn't get too serious, oh sure, it deals with the trials of being a teenager, from disappointing sex, to shitty McJobs, from awkward dates, to break ups and even to abortion, but for the most part it deals with everything with a smile on its face and a really good joke not more than a minute away. Crowe crafts the dialogue beautifully, but Heckerling's direction often proves equally droll, be it the graffiti she focuses on as Stacy loses her virginity or the comically huge chairs she uses to make Stacy and her nervous date Mark Ratner (Backer) look tiny as they eat together, Heckerling packs the film with fun little visuals. Visually though, there's one thing most people remember from this film. Well, no, two things; Phoebe Cates' twins. Cates (who I wish had kept working after she had a family with Kevin Kline) plays Linda; Stacy's outwardly worldly wise friend, but plays her with the implication that, actually, she's far less experienced and worldly than she portrays herself. Her nude scene, a dream sequence in Brad's (Reinhold) masturbatory fantasy, is the scene that launched a generation on the way to puberty, and in the age of VHS you could hardly rent a copy on which the track stayed sound in that moment.

Fast Times does have an overarching story (two really; Stacy's and Spicoli's) but it is more a film of moments, and that's fine, because actually that's being a teenager; you aren't thinking about the grand overarching scheme of things at 15, you're living from one moment, one experience, to the next. In this respect Fast Times, written as it clearly is, is a good reflection of that time in your life, and while the fashions and the soundtrack (especially the soundtrack, and especially Somebody's Baby) have dated massively, the film itself still feels fresh and relevant as it approaches its 30th birthday. The laughs haven't dated either (I don't want to live in a time when the fact that someone has written Big Hairy Pussy on a bathroom mirror isn't funny) and the performances are strong all round. Among the cameos Vincent Schiavelli's science teacher may be my favourite (his opening line "I just switched to sanca, so, have a heart" is one of the film's biggger laughs), but just about everyone gets their moment to shine here.

I wish there were more American high school movies this good (the last one to get close was perhaps the still underrated 10 Things I Hate About You), but this one remains a real joy and even though my heart sinks every time we hear Somebody's Baby it still makes me laugh, and, actually gets me on an emotional level too, because it's easy to feel, so well written and acted are these characters that you know, and largely like, these people. That's why it's endured, and that's why it's on the list.


Standout Scenes




Oh, and this...

You're welcome.

Memorable Lines
Mike Damone: First of all Rat, you never let on how much you like a girl. "Oh, Debbie. Hi." Two, you always call the shots. "Kiss me. You won't regret it." Now three, act like wherever you are, that's the place to be. "Isn't this great?" Four, when ordering food, you find out what she wants, then order for the both of you. It's a classy move. "Now, the lady will have the linguini and white clam sauce, and a Coke with no ice." And five, now this is the most important, Rat. When it comes down to making out, whenever possible, put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV.

Businessman: It says one hundred percent guaranteed, you moron!
Brad Hamilton: Mister, if you don't shut up I'm gonna kick one hundred percent of your ass!

Jeff Spicoli: People on 'ludes should not drive!

Jeff Spicoli: Hey, you're ripping my card.
Mr. Hand: Yes.
Jeff Spicoli: Hey bud, what's your problem?
Mr. Hand: No problem at all. I think you know where the front office is.
Jeff Spicoli: [stunned] You dick!

Mike Damone: I can see it all now, this is gonna be just like last summer. You fell in love with that girl at the Fotomat, you bought forty dollars worth of fuckin' film, and you never even talked to her. You don't even own a camera.

The Greatest? Part 5: Jennifer Jason Leigh double

With this pair of movies we’re looking at a brief, odd, time in Jennifer Jason Leigh’s career, that brief span of the early 1990’s in which she was, to at least a slightly greater degree, famous. One of these films even embedded itself so much in popular consciousness that it won Leigh one of her surprisingly few awards… the MTV award for Best Villain. Yes, really.

RUSH
DIR: Lili Fini Zanuck
CAST: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jason Patric,
Max Perlich, Sam Elliott


RUSH is the film where I first really noticed Jennifer Jason Leigh, and made the connection between that and the other films I’d seen her in. Looking at it again, it’s hard to see why this movie turned me into such a big fan, because it really isn’t much good.

It’s based on an autobiographical novel by Kim Wozencraft, who was a narcotics cop in the mid 70’s. Along with her partner, Wozencraft became addicted to the drugs she took to maintain her cover. The film stays relatively faithful to this central idea, casting Jason Patric as the experienced narc and Leigh as his newly recruited, somewhat naïve, partner.

There are moments that work in RUSH, but not a single element that works consistently for the entire running time (including, sadly, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s performance). There are several major issues, but perhaps the biggest is Pete Dexter’s screenplay. It feels like a first draft, with characters not yet coloured in and archetypes in their place. It’s also incredibly heavy on exposition and extremely episodic. There’s act one, in which Kristen Cates (Leigh) is recruited from the Police academy, and learns about drugs at Jim Raynor’s (Patric) knee (this allows Dexter to go into raw exposition mode for minutes on end, notably in a scene in which Jim demonstrates shooting up). Thereafter the rest of the film is an endless episodic series of drug deals with sleazy cameoing actors (William Sadler is memorable), mixed in with an unconvincing relationship between Raynor and Cates and some very cliché struggles with addiction.

Unfortunately debuting director Lili Fini Zanuck, who has not directed a single feature in the ensuing 19 years, shoots the film with all the subtlety and lightness of touch of a man attempting to anaesthetise himself with a mallet. She has directed most of the actors to give almost comically huge performances, none more so than the oddly named Special K McCray whose turn as smack dealer Willie Red is hammier than a buffet to serve 300. At times (notably when they are most strung out) she’s also got Patric and Leigh acting as if to the back of a huge auditorium. Jason Patric is a big problem for the film too, he has zero chemistry with Leigh, and their seemingly instant relationship never has even a grain of credibility, and when not directed to give the most hilariously overblown ‘I’m on loads of drugs, me’ performance I’ve ever seen he brings about the same level of engagement to his performance as I do to my weekly food shopping.

In amongst all this, there are isolated moments in which the film becomes engaging, almost all of them involving Max Perlich as a young dealer Cates and Raynor use as and informant. As in GEORGIA, Perlich has a great rapport with Jennifer Jason Leigh, and they really seem to bring out the best in each other as actors. When she’s with Walker is when we see Kristen at her most human, her most unguarded, and it is in those moments that Leigh really impresses, and gives us a real glimpse of the toll that this double life is taking on Kristen. It’s also notable that, though they aren’t in a relationship in this movie, there is a great deal more chemistry between Leigh and Perlich than she has with Patric.

Lili Fini Zanuck’s direction falls flat on a lot of important levels, from her frankly inexplicable casting of Gregg Allman as the man who Raynor and Cates have been tasked with proving is a major drug dealer to her thuddingly obvious use of montage and her awful choice and use of music. Eric Clapton’s score wails away near constantly (and Tears in Heaven is given an inappropriate airing) and when that’s not plaguing us we’ve got terrible bar bands, and cliché song choices (Freebird, fucking Freebird, really?)

I wish I had liked RUSH better this time around, because it’s actually a pretty important film for me, it led me to discover this great actress, and through that discovery it led me to a mass of great films and many happily spent hours (with many more to come), but that doesn’t make it good. For fans it’s worth seeing, but this is a minor film in a major career.


SINGLE WHITE FEMALE
DIR: Barbet Schroder
CAST: Bridget Fonda, Jennifer Jason Leigh,
Steven Weber, Peter Friedman



If there is a single prevailing theme in Jennifer Jason Leigh’s early career it is her superior taste in and ability to elevate trash. Whether it’s a treacly TV movie like THE BEST LITTLE GIRL IN THE WORLD, Paul Verhoeven’s appropriately titled FLESH AND BLOOD, cult exploitation classic THE HITCHER, or this tawdry little thriller, she can always be relied on to give the part her all, to treat it with the same degree of seriousness and craft that she did her more upmarket roles. It’s no use pretending that SINGLE WHITE FEMALE is anything other than an especially trashy take on the yuppie horror that was so popular in the late 80’s and early 90’s, but while it is trash it is, for the most part, superior, entertaining, trash.

The plot is pretty formulaic. Yuppie Allie (Fonda) throws out her boyfriend (Weber) when she discovers that he’s still seeing his ex-wife on the side. Unable to afford her (HUGE) apartment by herself she advertises for a roommate, eventually giving the place to mousy Hedra Carlson (Leigh). The two become quite close, but when Allie and her boyfriend get back together Hedra begins to try to emulate Allie in some disturbing ways, borrowing more than just the odd dress and spray of perfume.

You can probably guess how it all ends up; in a completely overblown violent conflict, but though the whole thing is desperately formulaic there are many things to like here. Chief among them are the performances. It’s a terrible shame that Bridget Fonda retired from acting following the birth of her son, because she was a genuinely interesting and underrated talent. She makes for a solid and sympathetic anchor here, and generously cedes many scenes to Leigh, but never lets Allie become some cardboard cutout protagonist. There’s also just something likeable about Fonda, she has that indefinable magnetism that allows you to root for just about anyone she plays, and Allie is no exception.

In the hands of a lesser actress the character of Hedra Carlson would have been horrendous to watch. There are moments, even in Leigh’s performance, that are unavoidably hammy (there really aren’t many subtle ways to play the last act of this film), but for the most part she builds a commendably subtle and rather affecting portrait of a young woman who is clearly as damaged as she is deranged. Typically, Leigh did a lot of research for her part, talking to several therapists about Hedra’s pathology, and it pays off, because the transition from the sweet, mousy, girl who comes to view the apartment to the homicidal maniac of the film’s last act is remarkably credible. It also helps that, when dressed the same and given the same (awful) haircut, Leigh and Fonda end up looking eerily alike.

The film does go off the rails in its last act, and director Barbet Schroder seems to throw caution to the wind and ask his stars, especially Leigh, to really ham it up. It is probably no coincidence that in the last few scenes, in which she spends much time stalking Fonda with a gun, Leigh often seems visibly uncomfortable. That said, even in these last twenty minutes there are some strong moments of acting from both women, especially as Hedra prepares to make Allie’s death look like a suicide.

SINGLE WHITE FEMALE is by no means a great film, but it is an entertaining one, it’s a heady mix of silly plotting, copious nudity and overblown violence, elevated by two performances which are far, far better than anything the script demands or earns. It’s perhaps best to turn your brain off, especially in the last act, but if you do you’ll have two hours of unchallenging fun.

The Greatest? Part 3: Leigh – The Big Picture / Huppert – A Story of Women

The next selections in this series find Jennifer Jason Leigh and Isabelle Huppert working in almost opposite circumstances; UNE AFFAIRE DE FEMMES sees Huppert in an acclaimed period piece, with Claude Chabrol, a favourite director with whom she has worked regularly since 1978’s VIOLETTE) at the helm. On the other hand THE BIG PICTURE finds Jennifer Jason Leigh in a small role in an atypical film from director Christopher Guest and working in broad comedy, which really can’t be described as her comfort zone.

THE BIG PICTURE [1989]
DIR: Christopher Guest
CAST: Kevin Bacon, Emily Longstreth, Michael McKean,
J.T. Walsh, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Jason Leigh


If there is one thing that is evident from THE BIG PICTURE it is that Christopher Guest thrives as a filmmaker when his work is largely improvised. This film, unlike the subsequent BEST IN SHOW and A MIGHTY WIND, feels very closely scripted and thanks to that it also feels very stiff, bereft of the dazzling comic energy of THIS IS SPINAL TAP and Guest’s other directorial work.

There are several big problems with THE BIG PICTURE, but the most pressing, obviously, is that it’s just not very funny. It’s hard to put your finger on the problem, but to me it felt like the film was just too on the nose, the jokes far too obvious. It’s the story of Nick Chapman (Bacon) who wins an award for his student film and finds himself courted by producer JT Walsh, who sets about allowing Nick to make his dream project… with just a few changes. The head slapping obviousness reaches its zenith in a late scene in which Walsh, whose ‘creativity’ has ended up taking Nick’s black and white film about a love triangle between three middle-aged people and turning it into a pitch called Beachnuts, is in a set that’s clearly supposed to be Hell; the studio head as Satan. It’s not just that though, everything feels rote and lazy, from the opening spoof student films and their makers (one, a conceptual artist, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the sub-plot in which a starlet (Hatcher) attempts to seduce the hot young director, right up to the so predictable that you’ve already guessed it closing shot.

The story clanks through the expected moments. Nick gets a whiff of success then cheats on his girlfriend (the lovely Emily Longstreth), leases a Porsche, begins ignoring his best friend and cinematographer (McKean). Then his deal evaporates, which leads to the hugely unconvincing last half hour, in which Nick reforms, and gets another shot thanks to a homemade music video for a band called Pez People. If anything in this movie should have been a home run it’s this, but the song isn’t funny, the video (despite Leigh’s energetic oddness as a dancer) is terrible, and also not funny. This, as much as the awfulness of Nick’s student film, seriously undermines the whole plot of the film. Ultimately it’s marooned in a wilderness between being believable enough for us to be interested in Nick and his journey and crazy enough to work as comedy.

The cast don’t help very much. Kevin Bacon is uncharacteristically bland as Chapman, Martin Short is at his nigh insufferable worst as Nick’s sycophantic agent (a joke that runs far too long to work in the same way that Spinal Tap’s Artie Fufkin did) and Michael McKean seems as ill at ease as Guest with the heavily written dialogue. On the plus side, Emily Longstreth (who, sadly, hasn’t made a film since 1994) is charming as Bacon’s girlfriend, and she’s fun in a sequence in which Bacon fantasises her as a film noir femme fatale and JT Walsh, despite the fact that all of his character’s actions are the most obvious pieces of ‘satire’ you can imagine, is great value as the slimy producer.

If this weren’t part of a series on Jennifer Jason Leigh her participation in THE BIG PICTURE would hardly rate a mention. She’s on screen for perhaps five minutes in total, and has very little to do. That said, she’s clearly having a good time and even with very little to work with she manages to give Lydia a real identity, and a very particular nervous energy; she moves like she’s being repeatedly electrocuted. It’s not much, I’d really like to see what she could do in one of Guest’s improvised films, but here she’s one of the better and funnier things in what is a disappointing film.


UNE AFFAIRE DE FEMMES
DIR: Claude Chabrol
CAST: Isabelle Huppert, Francois Cluzet, Marie Trintignant


The English language title for this film, A STORY OF WOMEN, may fit it to a certain degree, but what it doesn’t capture is the implication in the original title (explicitly stated in the film) that what its central character, Marie Latour (Huppert) does is essentially a woman’s affair, women’s business.

The film is set in the midst of the second world war, with France occupied and ruled by the Vichy government. As the film begins we find Marie and her two young children living in poverty, but an opportunity comes when Marie’s neighbour asks for help aborting her pregnancy. When the neighbour pays by giving Marie a record player she seems to see the opportunity, and to become determined that she, her children and her wounded husband will begin living better, war or no war. She begins offering further abortions, and letting a room in her house to Lulu (Trintignant), a friend, and one of the local prostitutes. Marie Latour is based on Marie Louise Giraud, who was one of the last women in France to be executed by guillotine.

Though its title is plural A STORY OF WOMEN is overwhelmingly the story of this one woman, of her attempt to keep her family (or at least her children, she shuns her returning husband) in some comfort and, equally, of her intoxication at being able to live well when so many weren’t. Marie isn’t a sympathetic character, Huppert plays her as opportunistic, an emotionally neglectful wife and mother, and not a little manipulative, but while it’s hard to feel for her you do understand her. You see the desperate poverty of the opening (in which she’s raggedly dressed and she and her children pick nettles for a very thin soup) and you can understand why, when she gets a little glimpse of what material goods and money can do, especially in the times she’s living, she becomes somewhat drunk on it, and pursues it greedily.

It’s a challenging balancing act for Huppert (whose performance won her the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1988, and a Cesar nomination). She’s spectacular, she never courts sympathy for Marie and, as ever, she’s extremely effective when her character is at her coldest. She’s especially strong in a scene that draws a contrast between the two sides of her life; coldly and dispassionately handing a client over to her ‘trained assistant’ (actually her housekeeper) before becoming sunny and lively on joining her lover (Nils Tavernier) in the next room. Good as she is throughout, it is in the film’s last half hour that Huppert is truly extraordinary. Once Marie is arrested all her facades slip away, both the coldness with her clients and her husband and the freewheeling, flighty woman we see with her lover and with Lulu are gone. Huppert seems tiny in these late scenes, as if the simple act of stripping her of her makeup and hairdressing has shrunk her. She’s also more delicate than ever, this once hard woman, now seemingly made of porcelain. The sheer emotion that Huppert puts across in the scenes in prison and leading up to Marie’s execution will really stick with you, none more so, surely, than her final prayer; crying, she says “Hail Mary, full of shit”. It’s a moment that resonates long after the credits, as does the performance itself.

This is a slightly atypical effort from Claude Chabrol. It lacks the stylisation that marks much of his work, and though his clear fascination with women (and Huppert in particular) persists, few of his other trademarks make it into this film. However, it’s a lean work, with every scene cut right to the bone (many are played with just a couple of images or a handful of sentences) and an expectation that we are intelligent enough to fill in what isn’t explicitly stated. The great advantage of Chabrol’s choices here, which are much more observational than usual, is that he really lets us in to Marie Latour’s world. The period detail isn’t played up, but it’s convincing, and along with Huppert’s and the rest of the cast’s naturalistic performances (Francois Cluzet is especially good as Marie’s frustrated husband) he allows us to forget that we’re watching a film and instead become invested in this woman’s journey to its bitter end. He does put in a little explicit social commentary, having Marie ask of her ‘crime’ “How could a man understand?” and dedicating the film to the children of the condemned (in a very odd late touch, that completely fails to work, he adds narration from Marie’s son, looking back as an adult at his Mother’s arrest and execution). But these are small things, and only the narration detracts (and then very briefly) from what is, overall, one of Chabrol’s and Huppert’s best efforts. This is a sadly underseen film, and well worth looking out.

The Greatest? Part 2: Leigh – Introduction / Georgia

I’ve been an admirer of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s for 15 years or more, almost as long as I’ve been a serious movie lover. I don’t remember what the first film I saw her in was (it may well have been THE HUDSUCKER PROXY), but what I do remember is a book I had back then. It was called Young Hollywood, and profiled a lot of that generation of actors. I remember being surprised by Leigh’s entry, by realising that I’d seen several of her films, and not made the connection that it was the same actress in each of them.


That’s, for me, Leigh’s greatness. She isn’t so much an actress as she is a changeling. Like DeNiro in his heyday she throws herself body and soul into her parts, she doesn’t so much play a person as she becomes her. She’s changed her body for roles, written extensive in character diaries, worked her characters jobs (including one at the same pizza place her character in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH worked at). She’s never the same twice, and is perhaps the only actor I can watch and, despite having seen her in more than 40 films and knowing a good deal about her, still catch myself not watching Jennifer Jason Leigh but instead her character.

Genius is not too strong a word, or at least it hasn’t been. Lately Leigh has dropped off the radar somewhat. In 2005 she married Noah Baumbach, and since she’s made fewer and fewer screen appearances, more often than not in small parts (four minutes in SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, ten in GREENBERG). Can she still be called the greatest working actress? Taken as a whole does her body of work back that up? I’m going to try and figure that out for myself.


GEORGIA [1995]
DIR: Ulu Grosbard
CAST: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Mare Winningham,
Ted Levine, Max Perlich


I first became aware of GEORGIA through the Oscars. I watched the 1995 ceremony, during which Mare Winningham was up for Best Supporting Actress, and though Winningham didn’t win (Mira Sorvino did) and I wasn’t at that time aware that Jennifer Jason Leigh was in the film, it stuck in my mind. Of course after I discovered that Leigh was in it, and that this is generally rated as perhaps her finest performance, I knew I HAD to see it. Unfortunately I was defeated by the fact that, so far as I can tell, GEORGIA never had any kind of home video release in the UK. If it did ever come out on VHS then it is spectacularly rare; I’ve scoured new and second hand stores for a copy for over a decade, and have never even seen one. It’s taken me the best part of 15 years, but I’ve finally seen GEORGIA and it was more than worth the wait.

The story is pretty basic. Two sisters, both singers. Georgia (Winningham) is a country music star with a loving husband (Levine) and a young family. Younger sister Sadie (Leigh) is an alcoholic and drug addict, scraping by from band to band and gig to gig, she’s got the passion for music, but lacks her sister’s real talent. The film is essentially about Sadie, her ever downward spiral, and the way the people around her (including Georgia and a sweet young man named Axel (Perlich) whom Sadie hastily marries) are affected by her.

What really makes GEORGIA the rather extraordinary piece of work that it is isn’t the story, which is familiar, nor even the screenplay (by Leigh’s mother Barbara Turner). The quality here is in the acting. There are exceptional performances all round, from the colourful character parts in the various bands (filled by people like John Doe and John C. Reilly, both of whom have done distinctive work since) right up to the leading players.

The undervalued Max Perlich (who seems to have dropped off the planet) is great as Sadie’s naïve, gentle, 23 year old husband. He comes into her life, ever so politely, when he delivers her groceries. He’s an easy character to like and to feel for, and in that we take a cue from the other characters, who also warm to him. Ted Levine, as identifiable as ever by his one of a kind drawl, makes for another sympathetic figure as Gerogia’s solid husband Jake. His relationship with Sadie is particularly interesting; there’s real warmth between them, but he seems slightly blind to her problems. The Oscar nominated Winningham is, make no mistake, excellent. Georgia is such a straight character that she could be rather bland, but Winningham finds real depth in her conflicted relationship with Sadie. She also performs all her own vocals, showcasing a very impressive (if appropriately MOR) country voice.

And then… and then there’s Jennifer Jason Leigh. My instinct in discussing this performance is to do an impression of Wayne and Garth meeting Alice Cooper, and simply fall to my knees crying, “We’re not worthy”. Think of your favourite superlative and treble it, Jennifer Jason Leigh is still better than that. She quite simply IS Sadie, it’s not acting, it’s not even that she’s living in this person’s skin, Leigh completely and utterly becomes Sadie in a way so complete that it verges on frightening. She hardly even looks like herself, appearing tinier and more fragile than ever, having dieted her 5’ 3” frame down to just 89 pounds. She seems so breakable, as if the wind could knock her over and break one of her tiny arms, and yet she’s also forceful, almost possessed, full of vitriolic energy that takes the place of any great talent on stage. Sadie could easily have been reduced to a mass of actorly tics, but Leigh never does anything predictable. Or twice. From the first moment you see her, Sadie is a living, breathing person, and as the film’s 113 minutes pass Leigh peels back more and more layers, leaving herself, by the end, completely raw; like an exposed nerve. Like Winningham, Leigh does all her own vocals, and her live performances were staged for real. The most notable takes place at a benefit concert (an appearance granted as a favour from Georgia), at which Sadie performs an almost ten minute cover of Van Morrison’s Take Me Back. She repeats lines endlessly, yelling rather than singing, essentially spitting the song in the faces of the audience. It’s like watching a ten minute car crash, and we see and hear every last excruciating note. It is an extraordinary scene, the total breakdown of a person writ large over the duration of a song, and it may well be the single best thing Jennifer Jason Leigh has ever done.

Towards the end the film becomes a little more conventional, as we see Sadie finally confront the depth of her problems, but even this passage is lifted by the performances. Is the film itself a masterpiece? Perhaps not, but GEORGIA is absolutely required viewing if you have any interest at all in screen acting. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s work here is among the best ever put to film, full stop. How she was passed over (AGAIN) by the Oscars while Winningham, who is great but like everyone else completely overshadowed by Leigh’s virtuoso display, was nominated is one of the great mysteries. Hunt this film down. You won’t regret it.

September: The Greatest?

Martial Arts Month is winding down, and despite getting sidetracked when I was under the weather, it's been fun and I think we've covered a lot of interesting films (and there are a few more to come, including SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD and a couple of Sammo Hung films). I'm going to attempt to run a special series every month, so here's September's



In September I'm going to try to answer, for myself, the question of who is the greatest working actress. Now I can't spend the whole month going through contenders, I'd never watch enough films for it to be a fair choice. But that's not really a problem. To me it is pretty clear that there are only two real contenders.

From France there is Isabelle Huppert. She's 57 years old, and next year marks her 40th anniversary as an actress. She first came to notice in the mid 1970's, and though she's not especially famous otside of France she's generally regarded as one of the world's finest actresses, and works constantly on film and on stage.

From America there is Jennifer Jason Leigh. A decade younger at 48, she's currently in her 30th year as an actress, and first gained acclaim at 19 as an anorexic teenager in TV Movie THE BEST LITTLE GIRL IN THE WORLD. She's an acclaimed actress, hugely respected in the industry and famous for her incredibly detailed research for roles.

It's interesting to me that Huppert and Leigh have a lot in common. Both shun the limelight, giving only rare and often reluctant interviews, and both are extremely reticent to talk about themselves or their private lives (Huppert won't even confirm whether she is married, or her exact date of birth). Both, too, are breathlessly acclaimed by critics and peers alike, and neither has ever even been nominated for an Oscar.

So, I'm going to look at ten films featuring Isabelle Huppert and another ten with Jennifer Jason Leigh (it's a crying shame they've never worked together, but I guess I can dream). That will make twenty new reviews, and hopefully by the end of the month I'll have a better idea of just who really is the greatest actress working today. I'm going to enjoy September. I hope you will too.

24FPS Top 100 Films: No.73

73: THE HUDSUCKER PROXY [1994]
DIR: Joel Coen [and Ethan Coen]


Why is it on the list?
The Hudsucker Proxy may not be the Coen Brothers best film, but for my money it is certainly the funniest and the most underrated work of their 25-year plus career. It’s a rather out of time film, belonging in both design and genre more to the 1940’s than the 1990’s. It’s a screwball comedy, in the genre’s heyday it could have starred the likes of Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn or Jean Arthur opposite some solid leading man in the James Stewart or Cary Grant mould. This being the 90’s those people weren’t available, so instead we get Tim Robbins as young inventor Norville Barnes who, thanks to the suicide of a corporation head and an attempted takeover by his right hand man (Paul Newman), finds himself president of Hudsucker Industries and Jennifer Jason Leigh as fast talking reporter Amy Archer, out to get the scoop on Barnes.

The Coen’s quirky sense of humour runs right through the script, whose razor sharp dialogue effortlessly mirrors that of the best of the films that inspired it. Perhaps the masterstroke is the very simple, but always effective, joke at the film’s very centre; that of Norville’s ‘extruded plastic dingus’ invention, the schematic and pitch for which amount to a piece of paper with a circle on it and Norville’s enthused “Y’know, for kids”. Whenever the dingus is the focus of a scene hilarity is all but guaranteed.

However good a screenplay you’ve got, it doesn’t play without a strong cast and though at this stage in their careers the Coens weren’t in the rarefied position they now enjoy in the industry they were still able to call on an excellent ensemble cast ranging from character players like Charles Durning and Bill Cobbs to old pals like Bruce Campbell and Jim True and from (then) rising stars Tim Robbins and Jennifer Jason Leigh to the legend that is Paul Newman.

Of the central trio, Robbins has the largest role. As Barnes his bumbling, gangly, charm works very nicely and for a smart man he plays dumb in a way that is both endearing and believeable. As much fun as Robbins’ turn is, Jennifer Jason Leigh is a fast talking whirlwind in this movie and she just runs away with the film. She’s channelling Rosalind Russell’s character from His Girl Friday, but has given her Katharine Hepburn’s voice. The amazing thing about Leigh’s performance is just how much of it there is in the amount of time she’s on screen. She blasts through the dialogue at 100 miles per hour, never seeming to pause and draw breath, but also without stepping on a single syllable or allowing a punchline to miss. Even more impressively, Bruce Campbell has said that he was intimidated by Leigh, not just because she nailed the performance so thoroughly but because she was letter perfect every take.

Just because Leigh steals the film that isn’t to say that the other performances aren’t great. I’m especially fond of some of the smaller performances; Charles Durning’s surprisingly sunny turn as Waring Hudsucker, for example, and Jim True as Buzz the wisecracking elevator operator. Neither is in the film for long, but both make a real impression. Paul Newman has a great deal of fun as the scheming Sidney Mussburger, contributing an amusingly slimy performance.

The film’s look is pretty astonishing, with a scale (and a price tag) that had previously eluded the Coens. Dennis Gassner’s production design is huge, beautiful, detailed and entirely in keeping with the period, and Roger Deakins does the exceptional design work (especially on the huge clock set) full justice with his customarily stunning cinematography, but this is really a showcase for the brilliant wit of the Coen brothers and for their typically eclectic and accomplished cast. All in all, The Hudsucker Proxy is the best kind of throwback; it reminds you of why you love the films that inspired it, but it’s also able to stand on its own as a great film and great fun.


Standout Scenes
The sketch
Any and every time we see Norville’s invention as a design it’s just priceless.

A Muncie girl
Wanting to get close to Norville, Amy pretends to be from his hometown, and sings the Muncie High School fight song with him.

“The Hoopsucker”
A very funny sequence in which three marketers (shot in silhouette) attempt to name the ‘extruded plastic dingus’.

Memorable Lines
Amy Archer: Finally there would be a thingamajig that would bring everyone together, even if it kept them apart spatially.

Mail Room Orienter: You punch in at 8:30 every morning, except you punch in at 7:30 following a business holiday, unless it's a Monday, then you punch in at 8 o'clock. Punch in late and they dock you. Incoming articles get a voucher, outgoing articles provide a voucher. Move any article without a voucher and they dock you. Letter size a green voucher, oversize a yellow voucher, parcel size a maroon voucher. Wrong color voucher and they dock you! 6787049A/6. That is your employee number. It will not be repeated! Without your employee number you cannot get your paycheck. Inter-office mail is code 37, intra-office mail 37-3, outside mail is 3-37. Code it wrong and they dock you! This has been your orientation. Is there anything you do not understand, is there anything you understand only partially? If you have not been fully oriented, you must file a complaint with personnel. File a faulty complaint and they dock you!

[Norville Barnes introduces the "extruded plastic dingus" to the board members]
Board Member 1: What if you tire before it's done?
Board Member 2: Does it have rules?
Board Member 3: Can more than one play?
Board Member 4: What makes you think it's a game?
Board Member 3: Is it a game?
Board Member 5: Will it break?
Board Member 6: It better break eventually!
Board Member 2: Is there an object?
Board Member 1: What if you tire before it's done?
Board Member 5: Does it come with batteries?
Board Member 4: We could charge extra for them.
Board Member 7: Is it safe for toddlers?
Board Member 3: How can you tell when you're finished?
Board Member 2: How do you make it stop?
Board Member 6: Is that a boy's model?
Board Member 3: Can a parent assemble it?
Board Member 5: Is there a larger model for the obese?
Board Member 1: What if you tire before it's done?
Board Member 8: What the hell is it?

Mini-Reviews: Revanche / Helen / Buried Alive / Wild Target / Please Give

REVANCHE
DIR: Götz Spielmann



Thanks to its very slow burning nature, and lack of a visceral payoff, calling this Austrian film a thriller might be stretching the point a little, but it is strangely riveting. It centres on Alex (Johannes Krisch), an ex-con working in a brothel and, on the sly, romancing one of the prostitutes, Tamara (Irina Potapenko). Wanting to escape from the brothel and from having to hide their relationship Alex plans a bank robbery, so that he and Tamara will be able to run away. Unfortunately it goes wrong. Tamara is shot accidentally shot dead by rookie cop Robert (Andreas Lust). Taking refuge with his grandfather (Johannes Thanheiser), Alex discovers that Robert and his wife (Ursula Strauss) live next door, and begins to plot vengeance.

I loved the opening forty minutes of this film; the slow grind of Alex and Tamara’s day to day life is brilliantly drawn by Spielmann, and the characters are intricate and, despite their obvious flaws, sympathetic. Kirsch and Potapenko give fantastic performances, and create a genuinely interesting relationship. It’s also worth noting an interesting choice with the subtitles here; as the Ukrainian Tamara speaks rather broken German the English subtitles reflect that; “I go car” for example, which really, along with Potapenko’s affecting work, helps paint a full picture of the character for an English speaking audience. I was genuinely saddened by the loss of her character, which does cast a melancholy over the whole of the rest of the film.

It’s not that the second half of the film is bad (though the character of Robert is frustratingly sketchily drawn). Kirsch continues to be excellent, while Ursula Strauss is equally good as Robert’s wife. However, for a long time very little happens besides Alex sawing very large piles of wood for his grandfather and while you’ve got a very real sense that film is building to something you do begin to wish it would get there. And then there’s what I call the Last House on the Left problem. The Last House on the Left problem arises when the entire plot of a film turns on you buying into a coincidence so outlandish that it is self defeating. Believing that Alex would find himself next door to the very man who shot his girlfriend is just that coincidence.

I appreciated the glacial visual style, redolent of Spielmann’s countryman Michael Haneke. I thought most of the performances were excellent and I was very pleased that the film didn’t go uncharacteristically over the top with its ending, but the pacing issue and that huge coincidence were just a bit much for me.


HELEN
DIR: Joe Lawlor / Christine Molloy



Helen (played, in a remarkable debut, by Annie Townsend) is an 18-year-old girl, she’s about to leave care and about to finish college. When another girl, Joy, who attended college with her goes missing in a local park Helen is called on to be her stand in in a police reconstruction for a TV witness appeal. Helen becomes fascinated by Joy; she begins wearing the yellow leather jacket that Joy wore when she vanished, befriends her parents and gets close to her boyfriend.

That’s pretty much all that happens in Helen, and despite a running time of just 72 minutes it often happens very slowly and very quietly. Shots are often held for an inordinately long time, silences often seem to go on forever and yet every frame of the film speaks volumes. This is a remarkable piece of work from first time feature directors Lawlor and Molloy. If they aren’t always best served by some of their supporting cast (all their actors are amateurs) that still doesn’t detract from the simple stark power of their story and images. Helen is obviously a quite carefully designed film, from the composition of individual shots (especially one that has Helen lying in the forest from which Joy disappeared) right down to the selection of a canary yellow jacket for Helen to wear, making her stand out in a way that we see clearly when we first meet her, is unusual for her.

Lawlor and Molloy are also brilliantly served by Annie Townsend, who gives an extraordinary, completely real, completely raw, performance as Helen. She’s so available to the camera, so easy to read, and yet she’s convincingly closed off emotionally to the other characters. I can find n evidence that she’d acted before, and at least on film she hasn’t acted since, in a world where someone as bland as Kristin Stewart is a movie star it would really be terrible if someone so clearly talented as Townsend didn’t act again.

Helen is one of the best character studies I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a genuinely fascinating look at a troubled young woman, and at a troubling event and how it effects the community and the individuals surrounding its happening. I suspect that a lot of people will hate it, many of them for many of the reasons I loved it, but I implore you to give this film 72 minutes of your time, because it will resonate much longer than that.


BURIED ALIVE [1990]
DIR: Frank Darabont

I like Frank Darabont as a filmmaker, but he’s not the reason I’ve spent the best part of 15 years chasing down this TV movie, which appears never to have had any home video release in the UK. I finally got it by getting a friend to record a Sky TV broadcast to DVD for me. Why? Why spend so long chasing a probably not especially brilliant, barely released, TV movie? Jennifer Jason Leigh’s in it.

She plays Tim Matheson’s wife, but she’s having an affair with William Atherton (Walter ‘this man has no dick’ Peck from Ghostbusters), who talks her into poisoning her husband so that she can sell his business and they can run away together. So far so low rent Double Indemnity, but Matheson doesn’t die and, after clawing his way out of his grave he discovers his wife’s affair and sets about crafting a suitable punishment for her and her lover.

There are a few really clever ideas here, the pretty horrifying dénouement being one of them, but it’s wrapped up in uninspired direction from Darabont, lacklustre performances, a lack of chemistry between the leads and a whole pile of quite laughable contrivances. It’s schlock, and to be fair Jennifer Jason Leigh has the ability to lift schlock above its station (just look at Single White Female), but here even she seems a little lost. She’s especially hamstrung by William Atherton, who gives a wooden performance, providing her little to play off and the pair have all the chemistry of a cat and a dog. She does pull out a strong performance in the film’s disturbing last few minutes, but it’s rather little and rather late. Overall it’s a surprisingly uninspired performance.

Among the rest of the cast Hoyt Axton (who I know only from Gremlins) does his avuncular thing as the town Sherriff and Tim Matheson does what he can with a role that essentially degenerates into bogeyman territory. Even by the relatively low standards I had expected of it, Buried Alive disappointed.


WILD TARGET
DIR: Jonathan Lynn



From the sound of the imdb reviews, this film is an incredibly close remake of the 1993 French film Cible Émouvante in all but one respect. The plot has translated exactly, the character names are almost the same, but the British appear to have forgotten to bring the funny. I understand that on any journey, say a cross channel one, you’re liable to lose a couple of things but mislaying the comedy in a remake of a farce seems somewhat beyond careless.

Bill Nighy plays professional killer Victor Maynard, whose latest contract requires him to kill Emily Blunt (according to imdb her character’s name is Rose, but I don’t recall getting that information from the film). Predictably he gets an attack of conscience and so he, Rose and a young man named Tony (Rupert Grint), who accidentally gets caught up in the incident have to hide out from Victor’s employer (Rupert Everett) and the new hitman he’s hired (Martin Freeman).

Wild Target is shockingly unfunny. It’s not as if the people involved in it aren’t funny. Director Jonathan Lynn was one of the creators of Yes Minister, Bill Nighy has been funny even in some pretty dire films and Rupert Grint is reliable comic relief in the Harry Potter series. So what happened? Why when so many jokes are being thrown at the wall do absolutely none stick? One of the major reasons is that Emily Blunt just isn’t a comedienne, she’s certainly very alluring as Rose, but she's more irritating than she is funny (half the time I just wanted Nighy to shoot her in the head so we could all go home).

That said, as noted before, everyone’s comic metronome is here hopelessly off the beat. Nighy just doesn’t seem interested, Grint flails around, desperately searching for either a character or a reason he’s in this movie (it’s lost on me). Martin Freeman underplays to almost the point of invisibility and Rupert Everett has so little screen time and so little to do that he may as well not exist. This film would have been equally amusing had it actually, rather than just figuratively, consisted of 98 minutes of tumbleweed blowing across the screen.


PLEASE GIVE
DIR: Nicole Holofcener



I want to like Nicole Holofcener’s films, and I feel like I should like them. Please Give, for example, has some nicely drawn characters; Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt as a middle aged couple who buy old furniture from the relatives of people who have just died, Sarah Steele as their teenage daughter. There’s also another family; Ann Guilbert as Andra, a 91 year old woman whose home Platt and Keener are planning to buy when she dies and Amanda Peet and British actress Rebecca Hall as Andra’s granddaughters. It’s got some clever dialogue. It’s often pretty funny and the acting is excellent all round. But I didn’t like Please Give because, largely, I just didn’t care.

I didn’t care, for example, about Catherine Keener’s Kate (though Keener, as ever, is flawless) and her mounting guilt about what she does for a living. I certainly didn’t care about her problems with her daughter Abby, who seemed to me in desperate need of a slap (particularly in a sequence where, when Kate gives $20 to a beggar Abby snatches it out of his hand, keeps it, and demands that Kate give him $5 instead). I didn’t much care about Kate and her husband Alex’s marital problems, largely because I didn’t buy the threat to it nor his affair.

I didn’t care about Amanda Peet as Mary, because Holofcener writes her as such a bitch that I had trouble buying her as a character, and certainly I didn’t care about Abby, whose feeling of entitlement to a $200 pair of jeans results in a final scene which sent me out of the cinema fuming. The one character I did care about, probably because she was the only one I warmed to at all, the only one I’d want to spend any time with, was Rebecca Hall’s character, also called Rebecca. Hall is a fast rising talent, and with good reason; she strikingly beautiful and, more importantly, I’ve never seen her be less than excellent in anything. Here she’s the film’s much needed ray of sunshine. Rebecca, who spends most of her time looking after her Grandmother, could just have been played as a saint, but Hall makes her simpler than that; not perfect, just a decent, caring, but very real, person.

There’s nothing notably wrong with Please Give. The story isn’t eventful, but it’s well told and at all levels the writing and acting is strong. It just struck the wrong chord with me, at the end of the day I just struggled to find any interest in well off people who were either struggling with the guilt of being well off in a vague sort of way (Keener), or just bitching about their lives (most of the rest of the cast. I, quite simply, don’t give a fuck.

From the Archives: Donkey Punch / Fast Times at Ridgemont High

In From the Archives I republish, and sometimes revisit, reviews that I wrote prior to starting 24FPS. Today we've got a shitty horror movie (mentioned by Bede when we were on Marcey's Superpodcast together) and a classic teen movie which fuelled a thousand fantasies. Enjoy.

DONKEY PUNCH
DIR: Olly Blackburn
CAST: Nichola Burley, Jamie Winstone, Tom Burke,
Julian Morris, Jay Taylor, Robert Boulter, Sian Breckin



To begin with I was warming to Donkey Punch. It put me in a great mood with an opening party montage set to the stonkingly good Rex the Dog remix of The Knife’s Heartbeats, then proceeded to make fine use of Peter, Bjorn and John’s equally wonderful Young Folks. A shame, then, that everything but the music turned out to be a horrible let down.

Take three completely interchangeable girls (Breckin, Burley and Winstone), put them on a yacht with four pretty much interchangeable lads (Boulter, Burke, Morris and Taylor), add one horrible accident (involving the titular Donkey Punch) and watch as the Plot-O-Matic 3000 clanks ever onwards, and there you have Donkey Punch.

To begin with, the screenwriting, by Director Blackburn and David Bloom, is horrendous. The three girls are basically one character whose dialogue has been distributed between three mouthpieces. They are also horrible depictions of women; retrograde cliché slags, misogyny on legs. The boys are equally odious, and almost equally devoid of character, though to give Blackburn and Bloom a modicum of credit they have managed (in Burke’s vile Bluey) managed to create one character that stands out from the others, even if he is as pathetically one note as all the rest.

It’s not like the acting helps either. Burke is the chief offender, delivering lines that actually might occasionally be amusing in a monotone that sapped my will to live from the off, his every line ends up sounding like a low drone, so little variation does he employ in his delivery. The other actors all struggle to shift their performances to the events of the last half of the film, and so they end up (particularly in the case of the boys) being laughably unconvincing, and draining what little potential the film ever had to be scary given the inept and cliché ridden writing. The girls do marginally better in that they do manage to play the one note their characters ask of them (Breckin: Slutty. Winstone: Slightly less slutty, tough. Burley:… actually she has no personality at all).

The second half of the film should be mainlining tension with the same zeal with which the characters approach taking drugs, but it doesn’t. The scares are rote, there’s no clear villain established (indeed the characterisation becomes incredibly confused and haphazard, with people completely changing from scene to scene), even the splatter is done rather half heartedly, mostly off screen, and the big moment is telegraphed hopelessly early. It’s also impossible to be frightened because there’s no way in hell you could care about the ciphers wandering around this boat.

Donkey Punch is a depressing film, a boring plod through the hoariest of clichés, played by dead eyed mannequins and written and directed with all the imagination of a youtube video, which likely means it will make a shedload of money, sadly.


FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH
DIR: Amy Heckerling
CAST: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold,
Robert Romanus, Brian Backer, Sean Penn, Ray Walston



At 22, journalist Cameron Crowe returned to high school for a year to research a book on his experiences (he jokes that he must be remembered as the kid with the weak bladder as he would often retire to the bathroom to make notes). What came out of this project was, first, a best-selling novel and second, one of the best, funniest and most accurate portrayals of teenagers seen on screen up to that point (1982). What is most notable about Fast Times is the sheer number of brilliant actors who made their debuts here. As well as the many named above the film features cameos from Nicolas Cage (then Nicolas Coppola), Eric Stoltz and Anthony Edwards.

There are several stories running through Fast Times. They never quite come together to form a single narrative, but this is the only thing that marks it out as the work of a first time screenwriter (and, in Heckerling, a first time feature director). The main story involves most of the characters; Brad and Stacy Hamilton (Reinhold and Leigh), respectively the oldest and youngest characters in the film are the leads in this part of the film, and while they are never really convincing as brother and sister (certainly there is no resemblance between them) they both put in excellent performances. Judge Reinhold is the model of youthful frustration as Brad, whether he’s arguing with a customer at work or getting caught masturbating by Phoebe Cates.

Leigh, though, is the standout among the cast, she has what is easily the most challenging dramatic material in the film. Stacy goes through a great deal of emotional turmoil in this film; she makes a mistake when she loses her virginity, she gets involved with a couple of bad guys, and she has to decide whether to have an abortion. Leigh was 19 at the time, but she looks so young and delicate that you instinctively want to protect Stacy, even when she’s not entirely sympathetic. When Roger Ebert reviewed Fast Times he seemed angry at Crowe and Heckerling for making a ‘sweet girl’ like Jennifer Jason Leigh take her clothes off in their film. If we can say anything by looking at what she has done since it is that Jennifer Jason Leigh is many things but shy is not one of them. What is so fascinating and so instructive about this piece of criticism is that Ebert isn’t reviewing Leigh’s performance; he’s not even talking about Jennifer Jason Leigh. The innocent he’s talking about is Stacy. That’s how good Leigh is in this film.

Pheobe Cates’ role is more broadly comedic than Leigh’s, as evidenced by the scene in the cafeteria, and the hilarious discussions she has with Stacy about her sex life. Cates is pretty good in the part, but what people remember about her performance in the film is her nude scene. It does bear talking about, while utterly gratuitous, it is one of the most remembered and talked about nude scenes ever. On her DVD commentary track Heckerling notes that whenever she has rented a VHS of the film the picture quality always seems worse on this scene.


Brian Backer puts in a sweet performance as the shy Mark Ratner and does particularly well in the scenes involving his date with Stacy. At this point one should mention the music, something both Heckerling and Crowe are rather obsessive about. At one point Rat is told by Damone (Romanus) that on the way to a date he should play side one of Led Zeppelin 4. In the car on the way to the date Rat plays Kashmir which, as any Zeppelin fan knows, is on Physical Graffiti; this continuity gaffe really works for the character, Rat is not very cool so the implication is that he tries to follow the advice but picks the wrong album. Damone is a slimy, unlikable, character but Romanus is so funny in his performance that it is hard to dislike him, though what he does to Stacy is pretty loathsome.

An entertaining peripheral story focuses on the relationship between surfer Jeff Spicoli (Penn, playing Bill and Ted trapped in a single body) and American History teacher Mr Hand (Walston) who provide an escalating series of hilariously funny confrontations. Penn, so adept at drama later in his career, proves a brilliant comedian here, admittedly Crowe’s script helps but Penn has impeccable timing and uses every line to great effect. Walston appears continually exasperated but this, according to Heckerling, is as much to do with what Penn was doing off camera as what Walston does on camera.

Amy Heckerling captures the high school milieu perfectly, excluding any adults bar Mr Hand to focus entirely on the teens and their concerns. There’s a fluency and a confidence about the film that allows things that would seem out of place in other hands (the dream sequences, the German restaurant in which everything is oversized) work and Heckerling clearly understands both her characters and her audience, never talking down to either.

It is tempting now, 28 years on, to write about Fast Times as a period piece but it is only really the cultural references and the hair and wardrobe choices that really date it. The rest of the film feels very true to the teenage experience, any viewer has been, or has known, several of these characters and that’s why Fast Times remains relevant. It also, of course, remains a great piece of entertainment into the bargain.