BREEZY.
William Holden. Kay Lenz. Dir. Clint Eastwood, Universal, 1973Something social media taught me: everyone has a red line you DO NOT cross. For some, no matter how rapturously describe Clint Eastwood's second directorial effort, BREEZY, soon as they hear it involves the romantic relationship between a 40ish realtor & a 17 year-old hippiechick, that's it. No more to say, no more to hear, please leave my house.
I've learned, too, a smaller group exists who say, "Sounds different. Is it on soon?"
This writeup is for the second group, though it feels more fair to the former to say I'm not without sympathy, but I'm more interested in judging a story by its whole self, not its CliffNotes. I do know many friends in both Fb & twitter shy away from the older man-younger woman plotline, but I feel badly for them. For all that BREEZY works as a May-December romance or as some kind of aren't-hippiegirls-sexy exploitation picture, it works best as what it is: a deep, well-drawn character study of a man realizing he's a fool & a freespirit who loves him, foolishness & all.
Middle age divorcee & successful realtor Frank Harmon has it all. Women who come & go, providing meaningless sex in between, a powerhouse career & MCM palace in the Hollywood Hills, even an incredible, apparently perfect woman willing to wait as he pursues his countless, shallow conquests. By the time Frank decides he's ready for more, however, the incredible waiting woman has fallen in love with a man uninterested in cake-&-eat-it-too.
In the middle '70s, CBS decided a miniseries about a dissolving US family might grab some attention, & so tasked John Updike with grouping all his stories about the Maples, Richard & Joan, & Richard's narcisstic need to abandon/decimate his first family in pursuit of some mythic happiness he believes life owes him. In the end, CBS abandoned the project, perhaps owing to Updike's inability to recognize Richard's monstrous selfishness. In BREEZY, David does see his selfishness & folly, but it embitters him further.
Enter Kay Lenz's Breezy, a latterday LA hippiechick who almost at once sees something redemptive in Frank, some broken sadness she knows she can fix, if stiff Frank will let her.
That's your movie, more or less. Clint Eastwood devotes the first of his pictures not to star himself to writing a sonewhat naive, overoptimistic mash note to romance, in which he suggests people with no obvious commonalities need each other like ducks need water.
Which brings me to my big problem: how the hell do I convince readers that, for all of Holden's belated revelations, newcomer Kay Lenz owns BREEZY from our first sight of her? How do I, a male, say with any cred that Lenz defines the entire archetype of sex-poz feminists w/o appearing to even once think that way? How do I convey that, even in Breezy's less-ethical moments, Lenz is 100% authentic, that Breezy feels like that girl you saw at the park but didn't speak to, that waif you want to care for until you realize she's caring for you? Like Jessica Walter & a number of Clint's actresses, Lenz's career, though often enjoyable, never saw these heights again.
BREEZY stands among my favorite Eastwood directions. He could have made a sexier movie, a more screwball movie, or a pretentious piece of shit movie. Instead, with two principals & a small cast of Greek Chorus-type extras, he made a small, intimate, finely drawn film about how love doesn't give a shit for our illusions. Universal buried BREEZY, & its rep today is spotty. That should be criminal. BREEZY works at every level, especially each labeled Kay Lenz.
Another film we need to discuss more.
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