Jonathan and Sandy, the two most significant figures in Carnal Knowledge (1971), enter some decidedly sexual but, by and by, dismaying and all too pedestrian relationships with women, primarily Susan and Bobbie, the account of which begins with their college days and ends in the 1970s when both men are in their forties.  Susan, acted by Candice Bergen, hooks up with Sandy (Art Garfunkel) but cannot or does not resist the temptation of sleeping with Jack Nicholson’s Jonathan (Sandy’s best friend).  A later marriage between Susan and Sandy turns unhappy, and Sandy starts cheating on Susan with another woman.  For his part, Jonathan meets the toothsome, buxom, fun-loving but neither stupid nor unkind Bobbie (Ann-Margret), she who can call Jonathan an obscene name for his reluctance to shack up with her—he’d rather just visit and copulate, thank you—but who also, finally, abjectly pleads with him to make her his wife.  Jonathan will have none of it until Bobbie tries to pack it in; then, ashamed, he marries her.  Later there is a divorce.

At forty, Jonathan has become a prosperous but misogynistic boor who regularly meets with a literate, well-to-do prostitute from whom he hears prepared, ego-stroking words about his being a “real man.”  Such words are required for producing for the fellow an erection.  Sandy, forever sans Susan, is not much better off:  He now loveth the counterculture, talking of “vibes” with his hippie girlfriend.  “Both men are losers, pitiful or laughable” (John Simon) in this a director Mike Nichols-writer Jules Feiffer production which acridly bashes away at the sexual revolution.

Feiffer’s dialogue is a grabber:  smart, mocking, and what today would be considered politically incorrect:  “I don’t want a job, I want you!” exclaims Bobbie to the man who won’t marry her—hardly a line a feminist would prize.  She might approve of this one, though:  Jonathan thinks he knows how to be tender to a woman, which prompts Bobbie to yell, “Feeling me up in public is not affection!” . . .

Cover of Carnal Knowledge

The 1977 Citizens Band was released during the national CB radio funfest, but didn’t make any money.  Even with a re-release and title change (Handle With Care) it fell commercially flat.  Directed by Jonathan Demme, it’s a movie rather short of brains but largely successful.  It’s a rural serio-comedy, a trifle silly about women and other things—congrats, though, to actresses Ann Wedgeworth and Marcia Rodd—but also slyly funny.

Other people have liked Citizens Band more than I do, although I do like it—primarily for some of its probing performances.  Boyish Paul Le Mat is at his best.

The 1977 Citizens Band was released during the national CB radio funfest, but didn’t make any money.  Even with a re-release and title change (Handle With Care) it fell commercially flat.  Directed by Jonathan Demme, it’s a movie rather short of brains but largely successful.  It’s a rural serio-comedy, a trifle silly about women and other things—congrats, though, to actresses Ann Wedgeworth and Marcia Rodd—but also slyly funny.

Other people have liked Citizens Band more than I do, although I do like it—primarily for some of its probing performances.  Boyish Paul Le Mat is at his best.

Directed by the man who gave us Last Year at Marienbad—Alain Resnais—Wild Grass (2010) is an arrantly strange movie in which a nigh elderly man (Andre Dussollier) finds a woman’s stolen purse and, though married, later demands a love affair with the woman (Sabine Azema).  She gives it to him, and the wife doesn’t seem to mind.  But what a lamentable bauble it is!

It is, I think, a fascinating picture which seems to be about the inability of the mind to absorb common, and not so common, experience.  If I’m right—and I’m going to say that I am—this surely is not all it’s about.  Based on a novel called L’incident by Christian Gailly, the film is ever alert to life’s burdensome absurdity (f.y.i., I don’t quite believe in life’s absurdity).  There is a perhaps a parallel between the young girl at the finis who thinks she will become a cat and the Sabine Azema character who thinks she has become Dussollier’s actual lover.

The business with the cat bolsters Armond White’s opinion that Wild Grass offers a “summing up” of pop culture.  The stuff of pop culture is certainly here, albeit how valuable this element is I don’t know.  Regarding the aforementioned young girl, it is as though she is in a TV commercial and yet she is not.  If life is not exactly like this, rest assured that it is like most of the rest that goes on in this bold and wild movie.

(In French with English subtitles)

Directed by the man who gave us Last Year at Marienbad—Alain Resnais—Wild Grass (2010) is an arrantly strange movie in which a nigh elderly man (Andre Dussollier) finds a woman’s stolen purse and, though married, later demands a love affair with the woman (Sabine Azema).  She gives it to him, and the wife doesn’t seem to mind.  But what a lamentable bauble it is!

It is, I think, a fascinating picture which seems to be about the inability of the mind to absorb common, and not so common, experience.  If I’m right—and I’m going to say that I am—this surely is not all it’s about.  Based on a novel called L’incident by Christian Gailly, the film is ever alert to life’s burdensome absurdity (f.y.i., I don’t quite believe in life’s absurdity).  There is a perhaps a parallel between the young girl at the finis who thinks she will become a cat and the Sabine Azema character who thinks she has become Dussollier’s actual lover.

The business with the cat bolsters Armond White’s opinion that Wild Grass offers a “summing up” of pop culture.  The stuff of pop culture is certainly here, albeit how valuable this element is I don’t know.  Regarding the aforementioned young girl, it is as though she is in a TV commercial and yet she is not.  If life is not exactly like this, rest assured that it is like most of the rest that goes on in this bold and wild movie.

(In French with English subtitles)