Nadine (1987)

David Thomson, in his Biographical Dictionary, doesn’t like Kim Basinger and asks “Is she even that good looking?” I thought this was slightly offensive and wildly unobservant. If her film Nadine has one basic problem, it’s that it doesn’t really play up her naturally wow glamour. Here they’re trying, in a vehicle made just for her, to make her a safe “relatable” mainstream actress, attractive but not too intimidatingly hot, more of a Southern comedienne. Jeff Bridges plays a roguish cad we’re supposed to like, but only do because it’s Jeff Bridges. Establishing him as a two-timer gives us the most inventive scene in the whole film, done almost in one take and seemingly designed to win a bet: proof that you can, albeit briefly, do a French farce in a mobile home. It’s the best bit of the film and the best bit of the scene is a split-second deadpan from Basinger. It’s all over too soon. There are a few other laughs and neat touches here and there, but considering she was the most eye-candy actress around that decade, everyone involved seems to have fundamentally misunderstood what a star vehicle for her should look like.

After eight years of the glossiest, flashiest, most day-glo and neon-lit decade in cinema history, the director Robert Benton seemed to have consciously swum against the tide as hard as possible here – 1950s Texas, a separated couple reconciled through a screwballish caper, a decidedly modest, purely efficient style of directing – and sometimes it feels like watching an amused director toying with old black-and-white Hollywood comedies through an added layer of retro 50s anti-chic. It ends up looking like a 70s Burt Reynolds comedy, with an emphasis on being very breezy instead of loud or frenetic – it has the same affectionately indulgent treatment of Texan simpletons, the same amiably innocent spinning of a yarn, and a folksy lack of seriousness, with a junkyard shoot-out for a climax that looks like a TV show. Even when the lovers are being taken to their deaths (which they’re plainly not going to meet), the mood remains pretty chirpy and spritely. A Texan audience might not like this kind of affection, or recognise any of these characters, but that’s not our problem. We signed up for a carefree comedy, not a docu-drama.

Even for American light comedy, Nadine is a nonchalantly wispy film, a pure genre exercise which shows an obvious delight in invoking its forebears and an even-handed lack of interest in both real life and the lofty heights of cinema. There’s something defiantly proud about its quaint unambitiousness and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Coen brothers loved it. Mediocrity and inconsequence can feel strangely reassuring on this scale – they’re only painful when presented as lavish triumphs. It’s the film equivalent of the stark and flatly apodictic truth that Georgia Satellites’ catchy-as-fuck redneck nonsense “Battleship Chains” (two chords all the way through) is genuinely greater than any Radiohead song. I’m not sure what film Nadine is better than, but at least it’s likeable. Of course, that’s also all it is. It never quite convinces you that they’re not completely wasting their main asset.

Obviously there’s not much point dredging up an obscure flop unless it’s to say something positive about it but equally it’s probably a good idea to address the fact it bombed. There’s an immutable reason why this was neither even a modest hit at the time nor a name to conjure with since, because everyone just tacitly understood that this movie is not really what Kim Basinger is for. Kim B is for 9 ½ Weeks, No Mercy, LA Confidential, The Getaway, Final Analysis. In all of those, she is intimidatingly hot and that’s why she was awesome. In this, she does a lot of her trademark jittery/hot-tempered belle routine, which is perfectly welcome for a while, but there’s only a slip of a film to back her up. Sure, she gets to play opposite Jeff Bridges, Rip Torn plays the cowboy-hatted baddie, and the whole thing has a kind of lazy cool to it, but the pace is a little too laid-back for its own good and none of this really constitutes the star-turn which is supposedly its point. Considering she is the eponymous Nadine, she hardly gets anything to do compared to Jeff Bridges. (Compare the superb Blake Edwards film Blind Date where Bruce Willis at times becomes almost invisible next to her.) 

Basinger doesn’t even need a film to back her up if they just make sure her sultry bombshellness will carry us through. If, however, you don’t make the most of her looks, and you don’t have much else to go on, then her being reasonably charming doesn’t quite prop up 90mins. Nadine certainly has its virtues but, by not best employing those of its lead, appreciating them calls upon us to exercise some virtue of our own - I refer, I fear, to charity. 

Cheer up, I'll discuss the Brechtian dialectic in Godard eventually.