Welcome to L.A. (1976)

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

one of my absolute favorites!

just watch it!

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

A gauzy, perfume advertisement-styled depiction of Los Angeles as a carousel of lonely, emotionally needy people has a great cast of actors, yet is so self-conscious about its theme that it leaves everyone wilting in a sterile vacuum. Debuting director Alan Rudolph, who also penned the screenplay, is so narcissistic over these hapless characters that self-absorption is just a starting point--does he think these people are reflective of modern human lives? Keith Carradine plays a songwriter whom women want but can't get (he's mired in alienation); Geraldine Chaplin is an unloved housewife who roams the streets; Lauren Hutton (at her most attractive) is a photographer specializing in pictures of empty rooms, and so on. Rudolph and producer Robert Altman, trying--one assumes--for a West Coast "Nashville", take the edge off everything, so that the movie is a smoothly banal experience, passive and bland. Despite a minute or two of honest emotional despair, the film quickly becomes a pity party for the apathetic. *1/2 from ****

When Karen Hood (Geraldine Chaplin) tells Carroll Barber (Keith Carradine) "I love Greta Garbo," he responds with the slightly cryptic "Yeah, she's nice when you're by yourself."Profound, but too offhand to be a predictable rejoinder. It's very striking, one of the most original of the film.Especially do you get the flavour of the upper-middle-class world-weary young disappointed in Baskin's lyric: "At first I loved your sweet complexion, your tawny cheeks and lip confections--they photographed you for your style.your body held me for a while; you could disguise with such beguilenow lying her remembering it better than it used to be is loneliness, but it doesn't really matter now, I never really loved you much, I guess."That's from the title song.From "The Best Temptation of all" there is "there's so many bodies and scenes...so many faces and feelings...dreams...wet tasting dreamswhen those silky infatuations come, enticin' me...invitin' me..excitin' me.."The world of "bodies and pleasures" that was Michel Foucault's vision of the future of sexuality in the first volume of THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY was being lived out in L.A. in particular before he even wrote that it would come to this.At a Malibu party where Carroll and his wealthy father Carl (marvelously played by Denver Pyle) confront each other, Carl's mistress Nona (Lauren Hutton) spends some stylized, posturing time with Carroll up the stairs overlooking the stylized party, the kind of party in stark white stylized modern LA houses where being comfortable must be impossible, and being controlled is an impossible necessity; and he says to her "Do you really care about that old man?" She says, knowing it won't do to say anything "less," "He sure seems to care a lot about me." Earlier, before Carroll sees Susan (Viveca Lindfors) for the first time since his return, she says on the telephone "don't you want to see me?" and he says "I've seen you." As the older woman, somewhat desperately clinging to an unshared wish, she says "I've seen you too. I liked it." To the love-and/or sex-starved real estate salesgirl Anne Goode (Sally Kellerman), Susan says, when she makes the arrangements for Carroll's apartment, "I pictured you plump and tiny with curly black hair--AGGRESSIVE. And here you are--soft and blonde and pretty." Anne, always trying to hard to please: "And here you are so beautiful."Kellerman drives Carradine to his new Silverlake digs. She says "this is Hollywood. I just love it. I don't know a thing about it, but I love it...(long pause)....does that sound like a line?...I didn't mean it to..I guess everything sounds like a line these days...Shameless, aren't I?...what are you thinking?....Carradine: "About your shame."************************************************************************"People deceive themselves here, don't you think? Yes. And that's how they fall in love. And then, when everything is over, it's the other person that gets deceived. Am I right? Yeah. Van Nuys Boulevard...(long pause)..I don't need to be loved by anyone...I don't mind waiting...it's how you wait that's important, anyway..I think.. but everyone gets deceived...don't they..."These are the opening lines of the film, which Chaplin intones in a cab going through L.A., riding all over it as she does every day, all dressed up in fur and pearl earrings and hat all for herself's own formality in the anonymity of a taxi ride.I knew a number of people like this in 1976 and 1977. They were over-sophisticated and living in the strange limbo between the volatile, but vital 60's and the beginning of the carnage and sterization that began to open its fully tarnished flower with the Reagan era and has escalated to the deafening roar we have only 24 years later. Bars were full of people who weren't on cellphones all the time.They weren't ever on cell phones--even the ones you can still see.

Twenty-three years after seeing this movie for the first time, my initial impressions still remain. What really sinks the movie is the TRULY AWFUL vocal delivery of Richard Baskin on the soundtrack. Had to go for the mute button every time. The only reason I even checked it out again was for Sissy, one of our best actresses. She's good, but her next Altman film 3 Women is more provocative. Welcome to L.A. -- Nashville it ain't!

There are only two reasons to watch this otherwise terrible film: Geraldine Chaplin and Sissy Spacek. Ignore the rest of the movie and fast forward to see Geraldine (near the end), and Sissy (about 50 minutes into the film), in ways that actresses of their reputations are seldom seen. Sissy's scene is brief, but rewarding; and Geraldine really projects a lovely picture of vulnerability.