Loving Couple

DIRECTOR WRITER John Sayles seems to like his movies heavy on soundtrack, light on plot. In his recent Lianna, a young mother of two decides for no apparent reason to take up homosexuality while a Joni Mitchellesque voice sings about love and other relevant topics in the background. Lianna does a lot of mournful staring out of windows, the crooning puts us--sort of--in the mood, and nothing much else happens.

Baby It's You is also a love story, but this time the music is midsixties R&B and the characters are straight. Two high school seniors become briefly--and inexplicably--involved. They break up, get back together, drift apart, get back together, graduate from high school, drift back together, break up for good, but get back together one last time as the film's credits roll, ever so slowly. We enjoy the film because Sayles has hired an attractive cast, and because coming-of-age movies, though a dime a dozen these days, evoke that special nostalgic' something in all of us. When it's over, however, we're left feeling just a tad sheepish. Although we've spent two and a half hours indulging high school fantasies, we have nothing to show for it but an appreciation for 60s fashion and a head full of Bruce Springsteen.

The movie takes us on an entertaining if oft-made trip back in time. The place is Trenton, New Jersey, the year 1967, and the locale an ethnically and racially integrated public high school called St. Catherine's. The mood throughout is decidedly adolescent. We meet all the usual denizens of such films: the clique of giggly, somewhat unattractive girls, the class slut who "likes it while [she's] doin' it" but feels shitty afterwards, the overprotective parents--"you need protein, you need fiber..."--the refined lady drama teacher and her prize student, Jill Rosen, the school's smart, pretty girl who heads the drama club and dreams of stardom, and who has always made everyone else jealous.

Jill (played by a lovely newcomer, Rosanna Arquette) can't resist the long, lean body of a local thug named Albert "the Sheik". Although he's already been expelled from one high school, and doesn't look like a natural for St. Catherine's either, although he steals cars and drives something he calls the "ratmobile," although he says things like "You think I'm gonna make moves on you?", Jill finds herself suddenly necking passionately with him in dark movie houses and sneaking out of the house to hang out at a working class bar called Joey D's.

Since she's a nice Jewish girl who wears knocaocks and headbands, since he's Italian and wears three piece suits, their relationship can't be all roses. We never really see them having a conversation--maybe high school romances don't include such things--so it comes as no surprise when Jill, under pressure from teachers and parents to drop "that boy," works herself up into a rage after he sneaks into one of her drama rehearsals. Only after he kidnaps the girl and her friend, holding them at gunpoint in the backseat of the "rat" while his friend careens around Trenton, does their relationship return to normal. It falters again when he's expelled from St. Catherine's picks up the next fall when Jill, feeling out of it at Sarah Lawrence, visits him in Miami. Yes, she loses her virginity and suddenly sees the Sheik--who gets his name from the condoms, he proudly informs her--as the not terribly smart, two-bit hustler that he is. Etcetera.

BECAUSE ARQUETTE has a charming overbite and a wistful smile, lots of nice clothes and even, incredibly, acting talent, Sayles's cliches seem fresh at least some of the time. The scene in which our hero first tries to pick up our heroine in a parking lot must have been played out in about a million movies before this one. "What are you afraid of?" "You don't even know me." "Do you like driving fast?" But when Jill, after agreeing to go out with him, looks into her mirror later that day and shouts "you dope" we kind of like it. Schlock, but good.

Vincent Spano plays Sheik like a young John Travolta, only better. He manages to act arrogant and oily without the sleaze that usually comes with it. Neither Spano nor Arquette has a chance against the movie's sound track, however. Whenever things reach a climactic pitch, whenever Sayles wants us to feel excited or depressed, he simply turns on the stereo. Instead of letting the players act, he pounds the mood home with driving rock. It's there when Sheik first strides into the school cafeteria. It's there when a wide-eyed Jill watches couples neck in Joey D's. It's there when the couple play hooky for a day drive down to the shore. And it's at Sarah Lawrence parties and late-night car chases and scenes in which Sheik drives non-stop from Miami to New York to confront Jill. In the end, the sound becomes meaningless and we get a headache.

This movie looks nice in an unobtrusive way. The cameraman was clearly taken by Arquette's fetching beauty, and he shoots her at all sorts of angles and in all sorts of lights. She matures quite convincingly during the movie, losing some of her knock-kneed innocence for Sarah Lawrence chic. But there are too many holes, too many inconsistencies to raise Baby It's You from the level of high school melodrama. How is it that Sheik steals cars and never gets caught? Why does Jill dress so nicely, but live in a very plain middle class house on a very plain street? How does she manage to fit all those nice outfits into two--count them!--suitcases when she goes to college? And what kind of parents would agree not to visit their daughter's freshman room after driving her all the way to Sarah Lawrence?

Of course, this film is all about growing up, losing your dreams, and discovering your emotional isolation from the rest of the world. How very poignant. And, in this instance, how ultimately boring.