Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)

 Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a disturbing and graphically violent film that takes full advantage of the 1970s backdrop of the intersections of the sexual revolution, the growth of feminism, and even the drug culture. Diane Keaton plays Teresa (Terry), a college student who becomes a dedicated teacher of the deaf but who spends her nights becoming increasingly involved in high-risk sexual behavior with a series of men, some of whom are dangerously violent. When the film begins, Terry is living at home with her Irish Catholic family, under the tyrannical control of her father (Richard Kiley), who embodies almost every imaginable stereotype of the cigar-smoking, Notre Dame-obsessed Catholic father. She’s also having an affair with her married college professor, Martin (Alan Feinstein), who takes advantage of her sexually and then emotionally abuses her. She loves him and enjoys exploring the boundaries of acceptable sexual behavior with him, but thanks to his demeaning attitude toward her, the relationship is especially toxic, so the audience is grateful when Martin ends it. One of Terry’s sisters, Kitty (Tuesday Weld in a small but Oscar-nominated performance), shows Terry another life: one of swingers and drug use and promiscuity that fits within the sexually saturated environment of the 1970s. There are porn theaters, sex shops, go-go bars everywhere on the screen, and there are many singles bars as well. Terry begins to frequent them, but the men she takes back to her small apartment only increase the sense of danger in her life. For example, Richard Gere’s Tony, a hustler with whom she has a series of encounters, has a switchblade (a glow-in-the-dark switchblade, no less). Watching Gere in one of his earliest screen appearances is fascinating, and his bizarre “dance” while wearing nothing but a jockstrap is a highlight of the film. (If you’ve never seen the film, pause for a moment to contemplate the image of a young, beautiful Gere in nothing but a jockstrap for an extended sequence; it’s breathtaking.) He’s quite beautiful, but his character becomes increasingly unstable as the film progresses. When Terry tries to date a “nice” guy, William Atherton’s James, a social worker, she finds him boring; she’s more interested in sexual activity than “proper” dates. Even though he begins following her, stalking, really, he doesn’t present enough of a danger for her to find him exciting and/or attractive. Keaton is quite spectacular here, giving such a different but perhaps even better performance than in the role the same year that won her the Oscar, the title character of Annie Hall. Her willingness to take such a gamble with an explicit role like this is astonishing; it would be tough to think of another actress who would have done both Annie Hall and Looking for Mr. Goodbar within the same year. She exposes both Terry’s fragility and her strength, and she ably depicts both the allure that anonymous and sometimes rough sex has for Terry as well as the gentleness with which she works with her young students. Her interactions with these students is really very touching, but it serves as such a stark contrast to her nocturnal activities. In addition to Gere, the film also showcases early film appearances by LeVar Burton, Brian Dennehy, and Tom Berenger. The final sequence, which involves Berenger’s character Gary, is not only brutal in its depiction of violence but also intensely homophobic. The shock of watching his reaction to being unable to perform sexually leaves the film on an incredibly dark note, but having his character be a sexually confused “gay” hustler who has earlier been the victim of a gay bashing presents an unsavory element to a film which has been already been difficult at times to watch.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Tuesday Weld) and Best Cinematography