Smooth talk

National Review, April 25, 1986 by JOhn Simon

This, I'm afraid, cannot be explained away, as Miss Oates has tried to do, as the difference between the mid-Sixties, when the story was written, and the mid-Eighties, when the film was made: "a girl's coming of age that involves the succumbing to, but then rejecting, the 'trashy dreams' of her popteen culture." True, there is a chasm of time and sensibility between Oates '66 and Chopra-Cole '85.

Today Connie may well have had casual sex with the boys from the mall, and Miss Chopra, feminist that she doubtless is, would perceive her film as a 15-year-old woman's coming of age and self-assertion. But does her ending make sense? Is a tumble in the hay (or grass) with a cunning, ominous man twice her age and possibly a murderer the right rite of passage for a naive young girl? Is that the way for her to gain the upper hand, a new self-assurance, and charity toward her kinfolk--not to mention the ability to outgrow a favorite rock record? And what about all the other garish rock songs on the soundtrack, the combined work of James Taylor and four other musicians--has she outgrown them as well? With feminists like Joyce Chopra, who needs male supremacists?