No Small Affair (1984) – DVD

*½/**** Image B- Sound A-
starring Demi Moore, Jon Cryer, George Wendt, Peter Frechette
screenplay by Charles Bolt and Terence Mulcahy
directed by Jerry Schatzberg

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's hard to remember from the vantage point of today that Jerry Schatzberg used to be somebody. Maybe not so hard for the French (he did, after all, serve on this year's Cannes jury), but definitely for North Americans, who are wont to forget that Schatzberg won the Cannes Jury Prize for Scarecrow and gave Al Pacino a pre-Godfather role in The Panic in Needle Park. But by 1984, the same hard times that hit most other directors who came to prominence in the 1970s had apparently befallen Schatzberg as well, to the point that he was reduced to teensploitation nonsense like No Small Affair. To be fair, the film isn't the pasty aesthetic blight that was the norm for '80s teen efforts, but it is the same soup of shaggy-dog romantics and coy sexual intrigue as a million other films of its stripe. That it doesn't condescend to its material makes its failure all the more rueful, like watching Eric Rohmer attempt The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes with deluded gusto.

Charles Cummings (Jon Cryer, pre-Ducky) is a 16-year-old photography buff more interested in the perfect shot than in more traditional teenage pursuits such as getting laid. Given the sexual trauma centre that is his family (a hysterical divorced mother (Ann Wedgeworth) with a sheepish balding lover (Jeffrey Tambor) and a womanizing older brother (Peter Frechette) with a bra-less fiancée (Elizabeth Daily)), that may be understandable, but still, the itch ought be unbearable–as it becomes the day he inadvertently photographs older woman Laura Victor (Demi Moore) and falls head over heels in love with her. Laura is at first unimpressed with her-junior league suitor: preoccupied with her status as a struggling rock singer, she finds his insistence that he photograph her a tad irritating. But he slowly wears her down, and they forge an odd-couple friendship that counters his repressed nature with her more impulsive personality. Things come to a head, however, when he tries to boost her career by splashing her picture on taxicab advertisements–an error which has nearly disastrous consequences.

Despite the saucy title (and the DVD keepcase's cheeky assertion that "It won't be the last time she'll rock a younger man's world!"), the central relationship stays mostly chaste–and consequently becomes a source of constant frustration. Faced with Laura's refusal to part with her virtue (and Charles's uncertainty as to the attractiveness of the possibility), the film is forced to whipsaw perversely between horror at familial sexuality and the constant tease of the relationship, leaving any sense of satisfaction in the dust. This may be the one teen comedy in which the mere mention of sex is a source of fear (instead of just jolly embarrassment): so petrified is No Small Affair of other people's sexuality that it's a supremely uncomfortable viewing experience for most of its running time. And when it finally gets around to consummating something, it's a spectacular letdown–the panic built up by the rest of the film completely outstrips its pathetic attempt at release.

There are mitigating factors. Whatever their current cornball associations, Cryer and Moore acquit themselves fairly well, keeping a lid on the theatrics and letting their nascent movie-star-ness guide their path. And Schatzberg's eye for composition (aided, no doubt, by Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography) is a cut above what the genre normally tolerates, like some kind of second-tier nouvelle vague director let loose on a teen comedy. But this loads the wisp of a screenplay with more than it can carry. Somehow, I would have preferred this be a slapped-together rip-off like The Last American Virgin, which wouldn't have looked as nice but might have had enough vulgar vitality to give the piece a lift. To take the oversexed caricatures of Charles's family even as nominally seriously as they are here is to turn a dirty joke into first a Freudian nightmare, and second a laughable improbability. The seamless presentation only serves to emphasize the jerry-built nature of the object of contemplation–and blow the credibility that a cheaper movie wouldn't need.

THE DVD
Columbia TriStar's No Small Affair disc is schizophrenic in quality. One side of its personality is a little spotty: the anamorphic 1.85:1 image has serious grain problems, and while its colours are fairly lustrous, the constant visual noise is extremely grating. But the Dolby Digital 4.0 soundmix is a different sort of animal, one with a clear and robust tone, seamlessly integrating the surround channels and especially adept at rendering the (admittedly execrable) '80s synth musical numbers. Trailers for Mona Lisa Smile, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, and Jerry Maguire round out the package.

99 minutes; PG-13; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Stereo); CC; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-5; Region One; Columbia TriStar