**/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Rosanna Arquette, Eric Roberts, Mare Winningham, Jim Youngs
screenplay by Beth Henley
directed by Evelyn Purcell
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I haven't very much to say about 1986's Nobody's Fool (no relation to the 1936 or 1994 films of the same name), a Southern-set romantic saga in which a young woman named Jessie (Rosanna Arquette) must either reconcile with lost ex-boyfriend Billy (Jim Youngs) and the dead-end small town he represents, or blow away into the frightening unknown with travelling stagehand Riley (Eric Roberts). No guessing how it ends up: as one suitor is played by Eric Roberts and the other is not, it's pretty obvious what's going to go down long before it actually does. Also in Riley's/Roberts's corner is that everyone in the town of Buckeye–a cultural backwater that's destructive to free souls like Jessie's–is either completely loathsome (such as Billy, who deserted poor Jessie when she got pregnant) or dismissive (such as Jessie's mother, played by Louise Fletcher with superb restraint). In a narrative sense, it's all as surprising as snow in January.
What is unexpected is how much Nobody's Fool demeans Jessie. Despite the fact that the screenwriter is Pulitzer Prize-winner Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart) and the director is someone named Evelyn Purcell (this was not a male-dominated production, in other words), it goes out of its way to belittle the feelings of the heroine, a Bridget Jones archetype incapable of defining herself outside the confines of a man. Like Jones, Jessie's very real problems make her the butt of jokes: two flashback suicide attempts (one after getting dumped by Billy, one in the home for unwed mothers where she gives up her baby) are played for comedy, and for long stretches, the film allows itself to adopt the character's self-abusive bent. It reminds of Pauline Kael's observation that women satirize women in order to seem less competitive to men–actresses and female authors trivialize their characters (and by extension, themselves) so that they don't come off too strong. Perplexing, sad, but still the apparent rules of the game.
Within these limitations, Nobody's Fool is not an especially bad example of the type. Arquette works wonders with her character, Mare Winningham somehow retains a modicum of dignity in her clichéd irritating-but-helpful-co-worker role, and even the terrible travelling theatre company that facilitates Jessie's renaissance is entertainingly ramshackle. The script's total lack of imagination wears thin, though, with Purcell adding insult to injury by ensuring that every good line in the script is pitched innocuously–as if to prevent the movie from becoming too rollicking a good time. Well, it's inoffensive, all right (visually, anyway), but at the cost of gratification: the movie is about having fun so long as you don't have fun. Those who don't want to have fun should see it; the rest of us have better things to do.
MGM's DVD presentation of Nobody's Fool looks supremely lustrous, the flipside 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen/fullscreen transfers betraying only a hint of softness in the fine detail department. What the accompanying Dolby 2.0 mono track lacks in sharpness it makes up for in general fullness. The only extra is the film's trailer.
108 minutes; PG-13; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-10; Region One; MGM
