Saturday, January 31, 2009

Day 31: Leslie Anne Downs and Tommy Lee Jones Get Busy in 'The Betsy"



Film 26: “The Betsy” (1978)

Written by Walter Bernstein and William Bast, based on a novel by Harold Robbins
Directed by Daniel Petrie

Every once in a while, a movie will show up in my mailbox that doesn’t seem like it should be there. It has my name on the red Netflix envelope, and when I check my queue online, it shows the questionable film listed. But how did it get there? How tired did I have to be, for instance, to once order a 1930s German musical? Often, I have just sent these back without watching them – an obscure, depressing-sounding French film maybe, or a 3rd-tier rom com that’s averaged 1 star out of 5 after 300 online reviews.

But not now. Now I am disciplined. Now I am checking movies off the list. Now I am watching a very, very young – and surprisingly ripped – Tommy Lee Jones get quite graphically busy with the gorgeous Lesley-Anne Downes to a fairly hysterical ‘70s love theme…

So here’s the plot. Angelo Perino (Tommy Lee Jones), studly race car driver and engineer, is recruited by an ailing but indomitable auto mogul, Loren Hardeman (Sir Laurence Olivier – yes, THE Laurence Olivier), to build an affordable, hyper-fuel-efficient and high-performance sedan for the modern age. No lie. Olivier even has a great line about the industry changing its ways voluntarily before being forced to. Despite being in the midst of 1970s fuel shortages, nobody in the industry, not even his powerful Detroit grandson Loren III (Robert Duvall – playing a powerful jerk, his stock-in-trade), will listen…until Perino comes along. Together, he and the senior Hardeman form a super-secret dream team to develop the car. Why secret? Hey, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean…you know the rest. And yes, people are really out to get them – with guns, explosions and industrial espionage. So far – fast cars and things blowing up, which is all the boys might need.

Of course, I’ve got Olivier, which frankly is enough. But the biggest treat personally was watching Lesley-Anne Downs (here playing Lady Bobby Ayres, Jones’s love interest), star of my all-time sentimental fave “Hanover Street” (1980), in which she loves and loses and loves Harrison Ford at his romantic best; after all, he is wearing a WWII pilot’s uniform. There are a few rare films that have managed to capture intelligent, shining female beauty, like time in a bottle – Michelle Pfeiffer in “Ladyhawke,” Katherine Hepburn in “The Philadelphia Story” and, for me, Downs in “Hanover Street.” I of course was all a-twitter to see her here, and see her I did.

The 1970s let-it-all-hang-out attitude is in full swing here. What’s refreshing is the director’s willingness to strip Jones as well. But it doesn’t stop the extraneous bedroom scene between Ayres and Perino from being silly. Attractive and professional as they are, neither actor seems fully onboard with the nudity, so that the intensity of their characters’ attraction with their clothes on seems to lessen with each moment that the actors’ bodies are on display for ticket sales. Just in case you weren’t uncomfortable enough, the full-string orchestra swoops in, bursting with soaring violins that promise the deepest of loves, even though the characters have already admitted to hooking up for a weekend special. The tune was so full that I kept expecting Jack Jones to show up with a mike in a corner, crooning “The Love Boat” theme song.

Regardless, this relationship in the rest of the film is handled maturely with some deft writing; I wasn’t shocked to find the legendary Walter Bernstein (responsible for “Fail Safe” and “The Molly Maguires” and blacklisted during the 1950s) sharing a screen credit when I sought out the source of the nuanced, adult interplay between Perino and Ayres – who are both young enough to play post office with dexterity, but old enough to have tossed idealized fantasy aside.

Jones carries some moments – especially the non-verbal ones – extremely well, though he’s far from the polished performer we’re used to seeing now. And Downs outside the boudoir? Far from disappointing, she sparkles. Witty and wizened, she exudes the confidence of a modern woman who is, in all likelihood, much too smart to take any man seriously.

Also done well – a completely nude swimming scene for Jones’s other love interest, the titular Betsy (Kathleen Beller), Hardeman’s smart, insightful great-granddaughter. Perhaps the intention here was also shock value, but Jones and Beller transform that intention with a pair of simple, gentle smiles. The younger woman, though a bit unsure of herself in dialogue, is completely comfortable with her physical beauty, and when ‘discovered’ by Jones, grins – a smile far more reminiscent of a toddler playing peek-a-boo than the beckoning of a seductive siren. He doesn’t make a play for her; she doesn’t pose for him. It’s almost as if Western cinema for one brief moment grew up. Not for long, obviously. (You remember the violins, right?)

I’m not giving much press to the 1930s storyline – Hardeman Senior’s backstory – which takes up roughly 20% of the movie. It gains momentum later in the film, but it really weighs down the beginning, I felt. It belongs mostly to the “unhappy gay son” phase of Hollywood’s coming out, before people with GLBT lives were allowed to thrive on celluloid, so for today’s audiences, it feels quite predictable – even with the juicy incest sideline. (Also a nice addition for fans of Katherine Ross – count me in – from “Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid,” who plays Hardeman’s intense daughter-in-law.)

Overall, I really enjoyed this picture – maybe not always for the same reasons the filmmakers intended – but I think that’s a good thing. It’s a little dated, yes; a little overdone, yes; but fun and – with the exception of a few notable moments – a movie for and about grown-ups. And those are rare indeed.

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