THELMA AND LOUISE
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
THELMA AND LOUISE is a film by Ridley Scott and stars Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon as the title characters.
THELMA AND LOUISE is a great film, undoubtedly one of the ten best films that will be released in 1991, a film that may well find a place on the 100-best list of films I have ever seen. I kid you not.
However, if you don't know already, the advertising campaign is very misleading, giving many people the impression that THELMA AND LOUISE is a light-headed road picture, a kind of Hope and Crosby with breasts. This is a very black comedy, and whether one finds it ultimately depressing or uplifting is going to be a very personal reaction.
Myself, I was enormously cheered by this movie, especially by its blackness, by its anger and rage, and by its absolute insistence on a certain kind of life.
The film looks like a Ridley Scott film, with its black wet streets, but it feels more personal than more of his that I've seen.
Geena Davis is absolutely marvelous as Thelma, who begins as a kind of girl-woman running away from home on a spree and who ends up a human being, a woman who knows herself and the world, a woman in control, a woman willing to make a decision, a commitment. That mobile face, that almost prehensile mouth are exploited here to their full potential. Davis pulls out all the stops to create her Thelma and it works.
However, good as Davis is, Susan Sarandon may be even better. In some ways her character is more complex because so much about Louise remains a mystery she won't talk about. First she's the mother, then the daughter, then the sister, the partner to Thelma, and through it all is strength and knowledge that win through to acceptance. It's a powerful characterization and one that shines even more brightly when one realizes that Sarandon also has to be Davis's second banana, her straight woman. Davis gets most of the laughs. Sarandon got my heart.
I'd like to see both women get Oscar nominations.
I think some people are going complain about a certain one-sidedness in the men's roles. It's true that Thelma's husband is the one of the most astonishing pig to ever pop a brew, it's true the foul-mouthed trucker is only technically a hominid, it's true the trooper is a Hitler Youth with shit in his britches. But Louise's boyfriend, without being an Alan-Alda sensitive guy, is a real mensch, and I suspect the cop who's heading the investigation (Harvey Keitel) falls in love with both women even while having to catch them.
There is some silliness in the movie. For example, no one ever seems to have heard of shrapnel or everyone carries a personal force field in case of exploding tanker trailers. And another poster has caught a continuity error. For some reason, I almost never catch these.
And you may, or may not, have a problem with the conclusion THELMA AND LOUISE comes to about women in a male-dominated society. I think the inevitability of what happens makes ideological concerns largely to one side.
Another poster also addressed the derivativeness of the ending. This is not a problem for me. The fact that THELMA AND LOUISE is about *women* makes that other movie's ending beside the point, too. In fact, if you want to talk about antecedents, let's talk about Goldie Hawn's wonderful SUGARLAND EXPRESS. That is the movie that THELMA AND LOUISE most resembles for me.
Honestly, Davis and Sarandon are so overwhelming, any objections pale to mere bagatelles in my humble opinion.
Do see THELMA AND LOUISE. Several times.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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