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Fool for Love (1985 film)

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Wikipedia article




{{Infobox film

| name = Fool for Love

| image = Fool for love.jpg

| caption = Theatrical release poster

| director = Robert Altman

| producers = Menahem Golan
Yoram Globus

| screenplay = Sam Shepard

| based_on =

| starring =

| music = George Burt

| cinematography = Pierre Mignot

| editing = Luce Grunenwaldt
Steve Dunn

| distributor = Cannon Group

| released =

| runtime = 106 minutes

| country = United States

| language = English

| budget = $2 millionAndrew Yule, 'Hollywood a Go-Go: The True Story of the Cannon Film Empire', Sphere Books, 1987 p189

| gross = $900,000

}}

'Fool for Love' is a 1985 American drama film directed by Robert Altman, and starring Sam Shepard, Kim Basinger, Harry Dean Stanton, Randy Quaid, and Martha Crawford. It is based on the original 1983 play written by Shepard, who also adapted the screenplay. It was entered into the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. It was filmed in Eldorado and Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Plot



May is hiding out at an old motel in the Southwestern United States. She is staying at the motel when an old flame and childhood friend, Eddie, shows up. Eddie confronts May and seems to try to convince her in argumentative terms that their fates are somehow linked and that they should stay together. May vehemently refuses him. She says that she has absolutely no interest in living with Eddie under any circumstances, that she has a job and started a new life and knows that if she goes back to Eddie their relationship will repeat the same destructive cycle it has followed before. As May's current love interest, Martin, shows up for a date, Eddie begins to thicken the narrative somewhat about his relationship with May as having a dark secret hidden within.

Throughout the film the character of the Old Manapparently the father of both loverssits to the side and talks to May and Eddie and offers commentary on each character and about himself. It is revealed that the Old Man had led a double life, abandoning each family in the same town for different periods during each child's life. Without knowledge of their father's philandering, May and Eddie became lovers in their high school years and when their parents finally figured out what had occurred, Eddie's mother shot herself.

May is afraid that Eddie has begun to emulate his father's feckless womanizing; taking to drinking and secretly seeing a woman May refers to as the Countess. The Countess returns twice to the old motel where May is staying in a black Mercedes and opens fire with a revolver apparently trying to shoot Eddie for his misconduct and mistreatment of her in their affair. In the meanwhile, the Old Man has begun to drift off in denial that Eddie's mother had been driven to suicide, and May's erstwhile date, Martin, is left standing bewildered to observe it all. When the Countess next returns for her revenge against Eddie, a stray shot from her revolver sets off an explosion which ignites the entire old motel into a blaze of fire. The "fools" in the play are the battling lovers, May and Eddie, at the run-down Mojave Desert motel which is left ablaze. It burns to ashes in a panorama before their eyes as the film ends.

Cast



Soundtrack



Sandy Rogers wrote the soundtrack songs including the title country pop ballad ("Fool for Love"), which later would also appear in the film 'Reservoir Dogs' and on its soundtrack album release.http://www.rattlerecords.com/artist.htm Sandy Rogers website

Reception



Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and wrote, "With 'Fool for Love,' [Altman] has succeeded on two levels that seem opposed to each other. He has made a melodrama, almost a soap opera, in which the characters achieve a kind of nobility." Gene Siskel also gave the film three out of four stars, writing that Altman "has served the play well."Siskel, Gene (December 18, 1985). "Altman doesn't fool around with tempestuous 'Love' story". 'Chicago Tribune'. Section 5, p. 2. A negative review in 'Variety' wrote that the film made the material "look like specious stuff filled with dramatic ideas left over from the 1950s. Some highbrow critics here and abroad likely will proclaim this a masterpiece, but general audiences will react as they did to the last Shepard-scripted pic, 'Paris, Texas'with a yawn.""Film Reviews: Fool For Love". 'Variety'. November 27, 1985. 16. Vincent Canby of 'The New York Times' wrote that the film "has several exceptional things going for it, namely the performances by Mr. Shepard as Eddie, Kim Basinger as May and Harry Dean Stanton as The Old Man." His main criticism was finding Altman's close-ups and cross-cutting too frequent: "You don't have to know and admire Mr. Shepard's text to want to shout out to the director to pull the camera back and sit still."Canby, Vincent (December 6, 1985). "Shepard's 'Fool for Love'". 'The New York Times'. C12. Sheila Benson of the 'Los Angeles Times' stated, "As played by Shepard himself and a ferociously wonderful Kim Basinger, it's a raw, explosively funny, elemental tragicomedy about the pure willfulness of love."Benson, Sheila (December 6, 1985). "Eddie & May: Fools For 'Love'". 'Los Angeles Times'. Part VI, p. 1. Lawrence O'Toole of 'Maclean's' wrote that "the performances of Shepard and Basinger are often mannered and too emotionally confined for all the noisy fighting that takes place. Despite those flaws, 'Fool for Love' is sizzlingly effective. What emerges is a portrait of two lives that are painfully, inexorably, even tragically united."O'Toole, Lawrence (January 13, 1986). "The knots of passion". 'Maclean's'. p. 46.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a score of 75% based on 12 reviews, with an average rating of 5.70/10.

References




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