BABY IT'S YOU (1983)

One of writer/director John Sayles’ best films, and (incidentally?) one of his least didactic.  It’s a classic high school first-love mismatch between Rosanna Arquette’s ‘nice’ middle-class Jewish girl & ‘dangerous’ lower-middle-class Italian smoothy Vincent Spano.  Set in a ‘60s that’s already Bruce Springsteen Jersey (some of his music anachronistically used between more appropriate ‘60s pop and Sinatra): HER - college-bound (specifically all-girls Sarah Lawrence); HIM - landing in Florida for nightclub opportunities between busboy duty . . . in other words, nowhere.  But when met as seniors, Spano dressed to emulate Sinatra in his Reprise Records ‘Ring-A-Ding’ days*, more Hall Monitor than student, a temptation and an embarrassment to Arquette.  And while Arquette is less judgmental than her friends, she still plays by the rules, won’t put out, and nabs the lead in the school play.  All of this finely observed by Sayles & cinematographer Michael Ballhaus.  But only in the second act, when it perfectly catches the college scene of the period, does the film surpass itself.  Sayles, who would have been in college just a few years later, captures the deep-felt fleeting moments about as well as anyone has: the quick, close friendships, awful blind dates with preppy boys from other elite schools that turn out to be not awful at all, the teacher who broke you down to rebuild . . . maybe for the worse, the new academic prejudices replacing old parochial prejudices, the inevitable breaking away from her past.  All with unblinking, uncanny accuracy.  The best forty minutes of filmmaking he ever did.  And what an eye for newcomers in cameos from then-unknowns like Fisher Stevens, Robert Downey Jr (hardly seen) and the sort of featured turn from a debuting Matthew Modine that presage a star-in-the-making.  (A position Modine frustratingly maintained without ever quite grabbing the ring.)  Sweet ending, too, with Sayles finding just the sort of visual element to tell the tale that was usually missing in his work.  Here, it’s seen when Spano, who looked five years older than Arquette back home, suddenly looks five years younger than she does when he meets her out of his element on campus.  A quietly devastating, insanely moving touch.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Something of a theme song here, Sinatra’s ‘Strangers In The Night’ was a rare 'old-line' success to make its way around British Invasion and MoTown hits to top the 45rpm ‘singles’ market.  Less known is that Sinatra thought the song was crap and hated having to sing it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The most Sinatra-like thing Spano does is get caught attempting to rob a tux-rental shop on prom night.  Sinatra did something similar (was it a drug store?) at about the same age, but his mom used her local political connections (and a bit of blackmail) to get the charges dropped.