Choose Me (1984)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Choose Me (1984) – A. Rudolph

Director Alan Rudolph was a protégé of Robert Altman (working as AD on Nashville, for example) and Choose Me offers a similar sort of unpredictable (almost plotless) experience as Altman once offered up.  But the characters that Rudolph gives us here (a talk radio relationship therapist, a promiscuous bar owner, an escaped mental patient and/or former spy, among others) seem somewhat phony – people don’t really talk the way that they are scripted here, all psychobabble with hearts on sleeves.  Moreover, it is hard to really grasp any of the points that Rudolph may be wanting to make about love or sex or relationships (just what are all those prostitutes doing hanging around anyway?).  I think I get it that the radio therapist (Genevieve Bujold) has difficulties with relationships herself but is “cured” to some degree by sex with romantic Keith Carradine (possibly mad) who nevertheless ends up with Lesley Anne Warren, the bar owner who can’t say no to men but hates herself for it.  I didn’t get a sense that these were real people or that there are any real people like this.  Still, the fact that the film doesn’t telegraph where it is going keeps it watchable. Thinking about it like a stage play (especially as all the characters’ paths intersect) probably makes the most sense. But it does have its merits as cinema as well with an astonishing EIGHTIES feel, some good cinematography and set design (including pink neon lighting everywhere) and a smooth Teddy Pendergrass soundtrack. But it is more than a little freaky just to think that these hair and clothing styles were normal at one point – now they seem as artificial as the rest of the film.