Main Cast: Willem Dafoe, Robert Gordon, Marin Kanter, J. Don Ferguson
Release Year: 1982
Country: US
Run Time: 85 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
The period biker flick The Loveless marks the feature debut of both actor Willem Dafoe and writer/director Kathryn Bigelow (Strange Days). Bigelow co-wrote and co-directed the film with Monty Montgomery, who would go on to produce Wild at Heart and The Portrait of a Lady. Dafoe plays Vance, a stoic, leather-clad biker who rides into a small Southern town and to wait for some other bikers. Their plan is to travel on to Daytona for some racing, but they have to stick around the little truck stop town for a while to get one of their bikes repaired. Vance flirts a bit with Augusta (Liz Gans), a widowed waitress. She's the only local who's friendly to him and his gang. Contemplating living in such a depressed, isolated place, Vance tells her, "I think your husband had the right idea." While the bikes are worked on, Vance and the gang, including the abrasive Davis (rockabilly musician Robert Gordon, who also composed the film's soundtrack) and his girlfriend, Debbie (Tina Lhotsky), spend the day in town, to the chagrin of the conservative residents. Vance hooks up with Telena (Marin Kanter), the rebellious teenage daughter of a rich redneck. Their little tryst creates even more tension, and the day ends with violence. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Review
Kathryn Bigelow's debut feature, The Loveless, which she co-wrote and co-directed with Monty Montgomery, is a strange, but compelling amalgam of art film and homage to the American International Pictures biker flicks of the 1960s. The film's dialogue consists almost entirely of attitudinal epigrams, in the style of Marlon Brando's famous line from The Wild One. When asked, "What are you rebelling against?" Brando's character responds, "What d'ya got?" The dialogue in The Loveless isn't quite so memorable, and its reliance on such existentialist biker repartee occasionally borders on self-parody. "Every one of us die like chips in some big floatin' crap game," opines Vance (Willem Dafoe) in the film's sparsely used, but overblown narration. Still, Dafoe's performance is memorable. It's clear right from the start of his career that the camera loves him, as the filmmakers memorialize his leather outfit and the gears of his bike with frequent fetishistic close-ups. The other performances are uneven, though Marin Kanter makes a strong impression as Telena, the troubled local girl who scratches what Vance refers to in the narration as "an itch between my legs." The films takes its sweet time studying these characters, as they sit around and talk about nothing in particular, or stare silently into space, waiting for something to happen, for much of the early going. Dafoe and Kanter's performances bring surprising emotional impact to the somewhat predictable ending of the film. There's a nice scene in a black liquor store in the segregated town, in which New Yorker Vance tells the quietly hostile proprietor, "I'm not as white as I look." The film also slightly amps up the homoeroticism of the earlier biker flicks. The great soundtrack and the sure-handed visuals enhance the atmosphere and help the talented filmmakers overcome the plodding pace. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
