Salmonberries Movie Review
k.d. lang wants to be an actor in the worst way. And she's succeeding…in the worst way. Anyone catch her on ABC's historic Ellen episode April 30, 1997? Okay, so that was a bit. But she had entire sequences in Mario Puzo's The Last Don on May 13–14, 1997, yelling about art as Daryl Hannah's movie director. (CBS claimed a national audience of 30 million for this small-screen Godfather.) lang's reactions reminded me of someone. Could it possibly be Madonna in the 1987 bow-wow, Who's That Girl? Yes, and it also reminded me of k.d. lang in the little-seen Percy Adlon film Salmonberries. Adlon, who'd enjoyed considerable success with Celeste, The Last Five Days, Sugar Baby, Bagdad Cafe, Rosalie Goes Shopping, and Younger and Younger, could NOT attract a U.S. distributor for Salmonberries! Finally, San Francisco's Roxie Cinema agreed to screen it in early 1994. Co-starring Rosel Zech (so good as Veronika Voss for Fassbinder in 1982) and Chuck Connors (perhaps hoping that this flick would do for his career what Bagdad Cafe had done for Jack Palance), Salmonberries is listed as a 1989 credit in at least one Chuck Connors filmography. The Berlin Wall had already been opened by that time, a reality that dates the story since Zech had tried to escape Berlin with her lover, who was killed in the attempt. Somehow, Zech carries on and winds up in Alaska with lang as her lover. It is odd to watch a fine actor like Zech play sequences with someone who can barely act at all; not exactly fascinating, but…weird, lang sings the same song over and over again on the soundtrack. Connors (1921–92) has very little to do. I wonder if they actually had to go to Alaska to shoot this thing. Anyway, lang's agent has undoubtedly been instructed to look for other parts to diversify lang's career. Think of the possibilities….
1991 (R) 94m/C GE CA Rosel Zech, k.d. lang, Chuck Connors, Jane Lind, Oscar Kawagley, Wolfgang Steinberg, Wayne Waterman, Christel Merian; D: Percy Adlon; W: Percy Adlon, Felix Adlon; C: Tom Sigel. VHS