Smooth Talk Movie Review

When Smooth Talk first played at Wheeler Auditorium at the University of California at Berkeley, the resounding hisses and boos were heard clear across campus; it was politically incorrect for a movie to show a teenage girl (Laura Dern) apparently asking to be raped by a stranger (Treat Williams). A closer look reveals that this is neither the point of Joyce Chopra's film, nor of the original story by Joyce Carol Oates. It's one thing to goof around in the safety of a shopping mall with girlfriends, quite another to be confronted with a psychotic adult male who threatens both his target and her family. There is nothing particularly seductive about Williams’ approach, and Dern does nothing to encourage him once she realizes the extreme danger of her situation. However, she IS playing a kid, and her perceptions and decisions are not as savvy as an adult's might be in the same predicament. The most memorable aspect of the film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1986, is Dern's heartrending performance; the picture certainly did NADA for Williams’ career! Chopra later made The Lemon Sisters, plus the telefeatures Murder in New Hampshire: The Pamela Smart Story and Danger of Love. Dern and Mary Kay Place worked together again in Citizen Ruth.

1985 (PG-13) 92m/C Laura Dern, Treat Williams, Mary Kay Place, Levon Helm, William Ragsdale, Margaret Welsh, Sarah Inglis; D: Joyce Chopra; W: Tom Cole; C: James Glennon. Sundance Film Festival ‘86: Grand Jury Prize. VHS, LV