Fool for Love ** (1985, Sam Shepard, Kim Basinger, Harry Dean Stanton, Randy Quaid) – Classic Movie Review 9402

Director Robert Altman’s 1985 drama Fool for Love is a rather tedious and disappointing film version of a riveting Sam Shepard stage play, which seems ideally cast with the author himself as the cowpoke Eddie, who returns to fight again with his old flame May (Kim Basinger), proprietress of a beaten-up desert motel, the El Royale Motel. Eddie is May’s half-brother.

Altman does what he can to liven up this highly theatrical four-character, one-set play with directorial flourishes, and a film-savvy script that adds characters, situations and settings. But you could sleep for half an hour in the middle of the movie and not really miss anything very much. Basinger is however extremely watchable in one of her best pieces of acting to date and Harry Dean Stanton adds his allure as an old man who lives near the motel. Shepard writes his own screenplay.

The film has 11 characters. Also in the cast are Randy Quaid as Martin, Martha Crawford as May’s Mother, Louise Egolf as Eddie’s Mother, Sura Cox as teenage May, Jonathan Skinner as teenage Eddie, April Russell as young May, Deborah McNaughton as The Countess, and Lon Hill as Mr Valdes.

It is made as an unusual prestige production for producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of Britain’s Cannon group.

It is shot in Las Vegas, Santa Fe and El Dorado, New Mexico, but the motel is supposedly situated in the Mojave Desert, south-eastern California..

Fool for Love is directed by Robert Altman, runs 106 minutes, is made by Cannon Group and Cinema ’84, is released by Cannon Film Distributors (1985) (US), is written by Sam Shepard, based on the Sam Shepard play, is shot by Pierre Mignot, is produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, is scored by George Burt, with Production Design by Stephen Altman.

Its tiny US gross of $836,156 cannot have helped Cannon’s precarious finances.

Basinger replaced Shepard’s partner Jessica Lange, who became pregnant.

The play premiered on 8 February 1983 at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco with Kathy Baker and Ed Harris, directed by Shepard.

The movie opens up the desert motel one room setting to involve the whole motel complex, a movie set built on a vacant strip of land off a highway outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Travellers dropped in to try book a room or get a meal at the adjacent restaurant, another movie set.

It is Altman’s fourth filmed play in a row, after Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982), Streamers (1983) and Secret Honor (1984).

Basinger also appears in Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter [Ready to Wear] (1994).

 © Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9402

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