Themes: Teachers and Students, Opposites Attract, College Life
Main Cast: Martin Donovan, Mary Ward
Release Year: 1991
Country: US
Run Time: 55 minutes
Plot
Made for PBS' American Playhouse, Surviving Desire is a very short romantic comedy starring Martin Donovan and Mary Ward. He's an uninspired college literature professor. She's a kooky student, and the only member of Donovan's class who doesn't doze off during his lectures. The comedy relies upon the inevitable pairing of two vague, aimless, but very recognizable campus types. The videocassette version of Surving Desire is filled out with two other short subjects directed by Hal Hartley. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Hal Hartley's short, sharp rumination on love, sex, and Dostoyevsky -- originally produced for public television -- ranks with his best work and still serves as perhaps the best introduction to the iconoclastic writer/director's unique, often intentionally stilted aesthetic. A good deal of the credit goes to Hartley's longtime leading man -- some might say his Jimmy Stewart -- the lanky, hangdog Martin Donovan. Donovan's gifts for deadpan comedy and interpreting Hartley's dense, encyclopedic dialogue are in full evidence here, so much so that -- as is often the case with micro-budgeted independent features -- some of the more unprofessional cast members pale beside him. Though co-star Mary Ward makes a fetchingly oblique, pixie-ish object of affection, she doesn't quite have the chops to make Hartley's lines sing the way his former naif/muse Adrienne Shelly could. (To be fair to Ward, the director has conceived her Sofia character as a somewhat embittered lost cause.) Still, Surviving Desire is almost delirious with invention: A clandestined first kiss between Donovan and Ward gives way to a silent, impromptu dance sequence that's like a cross between Jacques Demy and Mark Morris. Imminently quotable, stylistically audacious, and occasionally preposterous, Surviving Desire and its follow-up, Simple Men (1992), closed the chapter on Hartley's fascination with suburban New York romance before moving on to more ambitious fare such as Amateur and Henry Fool. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
John A. MacKay; Matt Malloy - Henry; Merritt Nelson - Katie; Rebecca Nelson; Gary Sauer; Patricia Sullivan; David Troup
Credit
Hal Hartley - Director, Hal Hartley - Editor, Hal Hartley - Composer (Music Score), Steve Rosenzweig - Production Designer, Michael Spiller - Cinematographer, Jerome Brownstein - Producer, Ted Hope - Producer, Hal Hartley - Screenwriter
College professor Jude (Donovan) becomes smitten with a student named Sofie (Ward). The two enjoy a brief time together, only to find that numerous obstacles, both tangible and intangible, prevent them from moving forward. Their conflict begins to expose parallels with the themes Jude covers in his literature class.
See also
Surviving Desire is generally distributed with two other short films by Hartley, Theory of Achievement and Ambition.
