Capital Celluloid 2015 - Day 14: Wed Jan 14

Valley Girl (Coolidge, 1983): ICA Cinema, 8pm


This evening's entertainment is part of the London Short Film Festival and full details of all the screenings in the season can be found here. Jennifer Reeder will screen four of her short films before the ICA shows her movie choice, Valley Girl, after which she will lead a discussion on the movie.

Here is the ICA introduction:
Jennifer Reeder is a filmmaker and visual artist from Ohio. She constructs very personal narratives about landscapes, coincidence and trauma. Reeder's work draws on influences from the John Hughes canon of eighties and nineties teen films, and specifically on one of her own adolescent favourites, Valley Girl.
And I Will Rise, If Only To Hold You Down (2012, 25 mins.)
Girls Love Horses (2013, 13 mins.)
A Million Miles Away (2014, 28 mins.)
Seven Songs About Thunder (2010, 20 mins.)

Valley Girl (Martha Coolridge, US 1983, 99 min): A young Nicholas Cage is a punk from the city, who meets Julie, a girl from the valley. They are from different worlds and find love, in spite of her shallow friends. Includes a new wave soundtrack including The Plimsouls, Sparks, The Psychedelic Furs, Modern English, and Men At Work.
Jennifer Reeder will intro and discuss the film, over 30 years since its release.

Chicago Reader review:
Director Martha Coolidge turned a short-lived fad into a genuine sleeper, an exploitation film that thoroughly transcends its origins to become a highly appealing romantic comedy (1983). Pert, toothy Val gal Deborah Foreman falls in love with Hollywood punk Nicolas Cage, who suggests a lobotomized Robert Mitchum; the star-crossed lovers are threatened by peer pressure and cultural incompatibility, but true feeling triumphs in the end. Coolidge hasn't made a campy, condescending comedy, but a satiric romance, in which the background gags and caricatures contribute to a sense of significant conflicts and solid emotions. It's irresistible. With Elizabeth Daily, Michael Bowen, Lee Purcell, Colleen Camp, and Frederic Forrest.

Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

No comments: