Looking for Mr. Goodbar - Richard Brooks - (1977) DVD

Theresa is a successful teacher of deaf children during the day but after a short unhappy affair starts to spend her nights cruising bars. Her craving first for sex but later also for drugs leads into increasingly demeaning and dangerous situations completely at odds with her daytime commitment to her children.

I never saw this film until last year when I finally got my hands on this DVD. I was completely blown away. It's amazing to see how meticulously Theresa's double life has been put together. The scenes are tightly knit in such a way as to not only emphasize the differences between Theresa's multiple roles (patient and kind teacher, lover of many, disco-freak, junkie) but also to steadily bring the story to an unforgettable climax. Diane Keaton is great in a demanding role and should have been nominated for an Academy award.

Thirty years after it's production, this unforgettable film still packs quite a wallop. Only slightly dated, it's the story of a sexually repressed, disabled young Roman Catholic girl and her sexual awakening in the wild '70s. In virtually every scene, Keaton gives one of the greatest performances in film history. Aided by a great soundtrack and superb support from Tuesday Weld and Richard Kiley, the film also features the breakthrough performances by Richard Gere and Tom Berenger, destined to become two of our biggest actors of the '80s. You'll never forget them, especially Berenger in an offbeat role that was quite a risk for an up-and-coming actor.

This is a masterpiece about the complexity of the human soul.

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