Goodbye Lover . Memphis Flyer . 04-26-99

Goodbye Lover

DIRECTED BY: Roland Joffe

REVIEWED: 04-26-99

Goodbye Lover is the sort of film likely to inspire either admiration or censure. Its comedy is so wickedly dark and its wickedness so brazenly silly that some moviegoers may feel the joke's on them. It's best simply to get over this; once I did so, about halfway through this stylish send-up of noir films and California self-help values, I enjoyed myself immensely. Director Roland Joffe may be slumming from his usual high-minded projects (The Mission, The Killing Fields, City of Hope), but he can take me along anytime.

As eccentric as the loose-noodle noir story (by Ron Peer, Joel Cohen, and Alec Soklow) is the casting. You know you're in sketchy moral and psychological territory as soon as the movie opens with a sex scene in a New Age church's organ-loft between Patricia Arquette as a perky real estate vixen and Don Johnson as a public-relations czar. Then there's Dermot Mulroney as Johnson's sleaze-bag kid brother and Mary-Louise Parker as a sweet young publicist. By the time Ellen DeGeneres shows up as an acerbic police detective with a rustic Mormon rookie in tow (Ray MacKinnon), the only surprise left is how perfect they all are for the bizarre nonsense at hand. As the tale of murder, lust, and money plays out with gotcha! twists and unexpected turns, Joffe and the unexpectedly interesting cast don't drop a stitch; the real suspense and the smart-ass satire remain seamless even after we're let in on the first joke.

Essentially a puzzle, Goodbye Lover is exhilarating in its very lowness. It stoops audaciously in spoofing just about every convention of the noir genre as well as the amoral viciousness with which some people seek to beat the millennial clock by pursuing very corrupted versions of the American Dream. If you take this sassy, smarmy, delightfully depraved film at face value, you will go home and shut the door and never come out again, waiting for Armageddon, knowing that our society is beyond help. If, however, you keep in mind that where there's satire there's hope, you may enjoy the pleasure of letting go and letting Goodbye Lover take you for a very chilly, but very bracing, joy ride.

--Hadley Hury

Full Length Reviews
Goodbye Lover
Goodbye Lover
Goodbye Lover

Capsule Reviews
Goodbye Lover

Other Films by Roland Joffe
The Scarlet Letter

Film Vault Suggested Links
A Simple Plan
Frogs for Snakes
Some Like it Hot

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