Desperate” is a word frumpy New Jersey housewife Roberta Glass (Rosanna Arquette) finds “romantic.” So she’s hooked on the ongoing soap opera that plays out in the personals section of the New York Mirror: a series of ads from “Jim,” who is “DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN.” Her curiosity gets the better of her one day, and she shows up at a Battery Park rendezvous that Jim (Robert Joy) has requested with Susan (Madonna). One thing leads to another, and before you can say Something Wild, the bored and boring homemaker is having the adventure of her life, involving the unlikely acquisition of Susan’s identifying jacket, an amnesia-inducing whack to the head, and the intervention of Jim’s friend Dez (Aidan Quinn), who thinks Roberta actually is Susan.
Dez is well aware of Susan’s reputation as a hellion, though, and the memory loss combined with the suggestion that Roberta, aka “Susan,” might be dating rock-musician Jim or might have thrown a mobster out the window of an Atlantic City hotel (as Susan is suspected of doing) gives her a freedom she has never experienced before: the freedom to be the quintessential fun-loving Bad Girl.
Director Susan Seidelman and screenwriter Leora Barish have created a new-fashioned screwball comedy, one that combines improbable elements, from ancient Egyptian artifacts and dead mobsters to stage magic and downtown New York chic, with classic conceits like mistaken identity and romantic conundrums: Should Roberta return home to dorky hubby Gary (Mark Blum), the “Spa King of New Jersey,” or let herself fall in love with funky Dez? The entire cast has a ball with this delightfully original madcap confection: Quinn and Arquette are terrific together; Madonna oozes the seductively sleazy and yet somehow still innocent charm of her original incarnation, all fishnet and visible bras, junk jewelery, and devil-may-care attitude; Laurie Metcalf is a hoot as Gary’s Stepfordesque sister; and Will Patton, as the requisite bad guy who also thinks Roberta is Susan, does what would become his usual sleaze ball routine with gusto. And John Turturro and comedian Stephen Wright have fun with small parts.
It’s all very ’80s, of course. New York’s East Village — in which a chunk of the film takes place — hadn’t yet begun to see the yuppifying gentrification that’s overtaking it today, and the film borrows its independent spirit with the help of downtown performance artists Ann Magnuson (who now works mainly as an actor) and Rockets Redglare in small roles, as well musician John Lurie in a tiny appearance. But from the New Wave soundtrack (a real treat for nostalgic Generation Xers) to the appearance of hairdos like the one that Flock of Seagulls guy had, this is a little slice of the decade of skinny ties and, well, Madonna, that holds up extremely well.
This review originally appeared at the now-defunct Apollo Guide.
