Teenage ennui, the desire to break free from the chrysalis and step towards the light of adulthood, is a fecund subject for the arts because the feeling is so universal. It’s the human condition to constantly yearn for something better and different. When we are teenagers, we feel more, making this strain almost unbearable. Couple this desire with restrictions imposed by parents and society, and the days begin to feel endless. Something has to happen. Something has to change.
In Smooth Talk, Joyce Chopra’s 1985 film, we first meet Connie (Laura Dern) while she and two friends are lounging on a deserted northern California beach. They have told their parents they are spending the day at the mall, but instead they have skipped off to enjoy some sun. Too young to drive, Connie is ready for a change. The sacred fruit of adulthood tantalizes Connie and her friends. They want to wear makeup and revealing halter tops, flirt with boys, flaunt their sexuality. But as Chopra shows us, as the girls hitchhike back to the mall, the world is full of wolves and other predators.
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While Smooth Talk may sound like standard coming-of-age fare, Chopra and Tom Cole go a different direction, basing their screenplay on Joyce Carol Oates’ much-celebrated short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Fans of that story may not recognize the first hour of the film, as Chopra and Cole create a vivid backstory to get Connie to the troubling point where Oates’ story begins. Despite Connie’s desire to escape the boredom of her life, there are a few things holding her back. She and her mother (Mary Kay Place) do not get along, the mother clearly preferring Connie’s older sister, June (Elizbeth Berridge). Meanwhile, Connie’s goofy dad (Levon Helm) speaks in sweeping platitudes and seems unaware of the turmoil plaguing his family.
The first half of Smooth Talk is an honest portrayal of a dissatisfied character attempting to find herself while locked down by smalltown life in the ‘80s. Cultural landmarks of time past, cruising the shopping mall and checking out other teens without an iPhone, pinpoint Smooth Talk to a specific time and place. But the themes transcend time. Connie and a friend soon begin crossing a busy highway – perhaps a metaphor for the gulf between adolescence and adulthood or innocence and experience – to hang out at a roadhouse where other young adults go to meet up and then hook up. Connie begins to experiment, allowing boys to buy her food and then going off to make out with them in their cars. While there, Connie attracts the attention of a mysterious older guy (Treat Williams). And that is where Chopra and Cole’s story cedes to Oates’.
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” has long been a staple of creative writing courses and Best Story Ever anthologies for good reason. It’s terrifying, frustrating, risky and completely open for interpretation. Dedicated to Bob Dylan, Oates said the story was inspired by the musician’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” as well as a serial killer in the 1960s known as the Pied Piper of Tucson. Much like Oates’ story, it isn’t entirely clear if the second half of Smooth Talk actually occurs or if it’s simply allegory.
Chopra and Cole defer to the source material in the film, the dialogue more or less lifted verbatim from the Oates story. The mysterious stranger shows up at Connie’s house when her family is away at a barbecue. He introduces himself as Arnold Friend (A. Friend) and claims that he is her lover. Another man sits silently in his car. There is something creepy about Arnold, and Connie senses it right away. He is much older than the boys she has been toying with. Maybe even pushing 30 or beyond. Arnold asks Connie to go for a ride with him. To be his lover. Connie refuses and asks him to leave. But he doesn’t.
What happens next in Smooth Talk is open to interpretation. Like the source material, it is unclear if Connie is falling into darkness or taking the next step away from childhood. Perhaps one needs to step through darkness to press forward. Dern would go on to similar material the following year in Blue Velvet. And just like in David Lynch’s film, Connie learns that beneath the veneer of innocence, there lurks something darker for women out there in the world, a danger for which no mother can adequately prepare their daughters.
Photo courtesy of the Criterion Collection
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