Desperate Characters

Almost everything good in this drama is due to Shirley MacLaine's very good performance (winner of the Best Actress Award at Berlin Film Festival), and the fine support of Kenneth Mars and other character actors, in spite of the monologues with no purpose that they have to recite. Although a few seem to be overacting for the microphone, probably they had to, because of one of those sound recordists who ask performers to "talk louder, I can't hear you", even when the situations are intimate, as is in this case, in almost every moment of the story. This was the first movie directed by playwright Frank D. Gilroy, and surprisingly (and thankfully) he made it short.

Supremely gifted actors Shirley MacLaine and Kenneth Mars do excellent work in masterful director Frank D. Gilroy's black-hued, acerbic drama about a moribund middle-class couple Sophie (Shirley MacLaine) and her cynical husband Otto (Kenneth Mars) whose increasingly glacial relationship has eased uncomfortably into mutual diffidence, vividly leavened with blithe bouts of deliciously acid sniping! There is a stark, bitter quality to the text, and the mostly middle-aged characters seem terminally dispossessed, angry, frequently addressing one another tersely in a cold, epigrammatic manner, the unvarnished, downbeat dialogue, while sublimely eloquent, has an obsidian dark, pessimistically Pinter-esque quality, and Sophie's existential despair becomes quite acute by the time the beleaguered couple take their ill-fated trip to their rather ostentatious-looking country house. Immaculate performances, and an unsually rich text make 'Desperate Characters' a mesmerically morbid treat!

Based on a novel by Paula Fox and and sadly never released in Britain, this plays like a grimly comic variant on 'The Pumpkin Eater' or 'Bleak Moments' transposed to New York. Very little actually happens, but it remains engrossing throughout.

Shirley MacLaine was never better (or looked better; one of the other characters actually tells her how elegant she looks) as she and co-star Kenneth Mars take a holiday from the eccentrics they're usually cast as by playing an ordinary couple maintaining their cool as The Big Apple (Bergmanesquely rendered by cameraman Urs Furrer) throws such annoyances at them as a ferocious cat and destructive burglars.

Chilly examination of alienated New Yorkers is difficult to find on VHS, but it's worth the search for Shirley MacLaine's performance alone. She's quite sympathetic floating through this frigid sea of lost faces and souls. The film is slow (deliberately slow) and lugubrious, but also undeniably compelling. The horrors of the modern day (circa 1971) are well-depicted in scene after scene, and the fade-out offers no pat promises (and, amusingly, no hope). In her autobiography, MacLaine scathingly dismisses the film as one that "didn't work", blaming it on script problems. I agree the 'plot', such as it is, could've been stronger overall, but--as with all unconventional stories--the people, their emotions, and things they experience are just as important as the dialogue, and all of those elements here are provocative and well-observed. What a weird one this is! **1/2 from ****

Not exactly a cheerful slice of life in the big city, DESPERATE CHARACTERS does bring a certain truth to its story of two middle-aged New Yorkers who seem to be losers in a world where everyday daily life is a struggle to get through. It has nothing that hasn't been said before, particularly by writer/director Gilroy who already gave us more of the same in his THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES. And as compared to another slice of city life, like A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, it suffers in comparison.

The trouble is the script which has all of the characters giving theatrical monologues revealing themselves in dialog that doesn't sound natural coming from these people. But SHIRLEY MacLAINE stands out among the cast with one of her better serious performances in a demanding role. She seems honest and real, despite some flowery dialog.

MacLaine herself dismissed the film as a failure in her autobiography, but it does have some holding power despite its downbeat effect.