Smooth Talk (1985) Movie Review: Caught Between Girlhood and Danger

“Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue”

“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” Bob Dylan

Joyce Carol Oates said that she was inspired to write her short story “Where Are You Going To, Where Have You Been?” (which she dedicated to Dylan) after listening to the above song. In 1985, screenwriter Tom Cole adapted it into the movie “Smooth Talk,” which was directed by his wife Joyce Chopra.

Dripping with atmosphere, rarely has a film so perfectly captured the feeling of being a teenager during a hot, sticky summer when you want to be older than you are but don’t want the consequences that come with it. “Smooth Talk” follows 15-year-old Connie (a perfectly cast Laura Dern), who’s currently out of school due to a summer break. Connie is one of the most honest depictions of teenage girlhood anywhere. So many stories with young adult protagonists insist they are the smartest/strongest/bravest/boldest/etc. Plus, if the protagonist is a teenage girl, she must also be incredibly attractive, but unconcerned with her looks.

But Connie is concerned. The scenes of her changing into revealing clothing and putting on makeup are awkward and poignant. Her mother, Katherine (Mary Kay Place), accuses her of having a head filled with “trashy daydreams,” and gives the impression that she was once the same way, and that’s why she lashes out at her daughter. Meanwhile, Connie’s distracted father, Harry (legendary musician Levon Helm), wafts in and out of the film and his family’s lives.

Smooth Talk (1985) Movie — A still from “Smooth Talk” (1985)

Connie spends her summer vacation like many 1980s teenagers: sunbathing, avoiding chores, and, since it’s the height of mall culture, hanging out at the local mall. Sometimes, instead of sticking to the mall, Connie and her girlfriends head to a hamburger stand across the street from it, where they hang out with other kids, mostly older than them. Sometimes they do more than hang out. Both an innocence she tries to conceal and a deep-rooted fear of being out of her depth make Connie pick boys who are just as young and naïve as she is, and are a safe way for her to explore her burgeoning sexuality.

She tells her introverted wallflower older sister June (Elizabeth Berridge), “You don’t understand. I mean, it’s not what you think. I’d never do that. It’s just…the boys are so nice to you. When we’re together…I never knew it was gonna be so nice. Did you ever have a boy hold you close and sing to you? This one boy, Eddie…he sang to me right in my ear. And he held me so sweetly. June, don’t you know how that feels? Just to be held like that?”

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Connie, like most teenagers, is convinced that she’s invincible. She thinks that choosing these boys will protect her from the other sorts of boys. I’m reminded of something that Roger Ebert wrote in his review of the 1998 film ”Whatever,” another movie about a directionless teenage girl flirting with danger; he said that the movie “knows how a lot of kids survive the teenage years through sheer blind luck. Others die or have their lives destroyed because their luck is bad. Most people, I imagine, keep teenage secrets that still make them cringe years later–memories of foolish chances they shouldn’t have taken, and relief that they weren’t caught.”

Connie doesn’t get caught, but is caught. By a mysterious man who claims that his name is Arnold Friend (a never-better Treat Williams). Connie catches his eye on one of her adventures, and when her parents and sister leave for the day, he comes to call. At first, Connie tries to politely rebuff him the same way she rejects other boys she’s not interested in. Arnold doesn’t fall for it, in part because he’s not an inexperienced boy, but a man.

Arnold is charming and is the smooth talker that the title promises, but there’s something off about him. He initially claims to be Connie’s age and dresses and speaks like a teenager, but he’s at least a decade older than her. The scenes between Connie and Arnold have a fairy tale quality, and clear parallels are drawn between him and the Big Bad Wolf. Except that Arnold is human, and this makes him scarier than a creature in folklore.

In addition to “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” Oates said that her story, particularly Arnold, was inspired by Charles Schmid, a serial killer who murderedt least three people in the 1960s and was dubbed the “Pied Piper of Tucson” because he gathered younger friends and girlfriends to help him commit his crimes. Arnold even has his own sidekick: a man named Eddie (David Berridge), who appears to be developmentally disabled.

When he fails to smooth-talk Connie into going with him, Arnold lets go of all pretense and outright threatens her. Even though “Smooth Talk” isn’t a horror movie, the lengthy sequence of the two of them facing off is one of the scariest scenes in any movie that I’ve ever seen. He tells her that he will burn down her family’s home and take her, but leave Eddie, presumably to murder her parents and sister when they return.

The short story, which was originally called “Death and the Maiden,” leaves the impression that Connie is murdered by Arnold after going with him to protect her family. In the film, he returns her to her home. It’s not explicitly shown or stated what transpired. While she looks the same, Connie doesn’t appear to be the same person as when she left. In the film’s final scenes, she seems older and more reserved. Smooth Talk played for exactly one week in limited release and grossed a mere $16,000 before being shown on PBS’ American Playhouse series. Still, it lives on in the minds of those who’ve seen it, sinister and unforgettable. It is a great film.