Desperately Seeking Susan

Title: Desperately Seeking Susan
Director: Susan Seidelman
TRT: 104 minutes
YEAR: 1985
AWARDS: BAFTA FILM Best Supporting Actress

Directed by Susan Seidelman, Desperately Seeking Susan stars Rosanna Arquette, Madonna, Aidan Quinn, and John Torturro. The story is about a suburban housewife named Roberta. Roberta seems bored with her life and becomes obsessed with this girl susan that she reads about in the personals. Roberta tries to set up a meeting with Susan but ends up being mistaken for susan and hits her head and gets amnesia and believes she is actually Susan. The film does a good job with showing what the 80’s were like and how people acted. Also, it is a very feminist film and madonna’s character, Susan, best represents that. In the film, she is a very independent and free woman who lives her life by her own rules. Roberta, on the other hand, feels more like a prisoner in her life and seeks to escape her lifestyle and live it up.

The first article I found if from Independent Film Channel. It is not a big article but it gives some interesting facts about the movie. This film was Seidelman’s second feature-length. This film is inspired by two other films which are Julie Go Boating and Jacque Rivette’s Celine. Also, for this film, she casted hipster extras, downtown personalities, and New York thespians. Furtermore, the big dance-club sequence was filmed at Danceteria. This was the place that helped launch Madonna's career. This scene from the film also helped propel "Into the Groove” onto the music charts.

The second article is from the Los Angeles Times titled “Los Angeles Film Festival: Susan Seidelman recalls making Desperately Seeking Susan.” The article opens up by stated “If the late John Hughes is considered the filmmaker who captured the dreams and angst of 1980s teenagers, then it's director Susan Seidelman who best caught the punk, free-wheeling vibe of the decade.” In the article, Seidelman says how she was nervous about the film’s release because by this time Madonna had become famous and they wondered if her new popularity would help or harm the film. Lastly, Seidelman says how she was able to relate to Madonna’s character and balance the characters of Susan and Roberta because she was already familar with the New York scene, punk, and New Wave.

This film was probably the most interesting and entertaining film we watched all semester. It was a very entertaining movie and was well paced and had just enough humor, action, and drama mixed in. The film did an excellent job with showing the New York punk scene at the time. However, it was a little weird to see a young Madonna in the movie playing pretty much a punk being see is from a pop background. The music in the movie was very good also and the cinematography, especially in the club, well well-done. This was a good film overall.

Sources:
1.)http://www.ifc.com/movies/13417/Desperately-Seeking-Susan
2.)http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/19/entertainment/la-et-desperately-20100619