Cinema: Beautiful Dreamer in a Minefield Desperately Seeking Susan

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Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) lives in New Jersey. Her husband sells hot tubs and makes a fool of himself on his TV commercials. Her diet-conscious friends drink rum and Tab. A romantic interlude for her consists of watching Rebecca on the Late Show. This is no life for someone who keeps a diary and looks like a new-minted movie star. No wonder she spends a lot of time leafing longingly through the personals column of a New York City tabloid, in particular mooning over a free-floating couple, Susan and Jim, who arrange their assignations, all over the country, by placing ads there. Whatever problems they might have must be more interesting than getting a new radio installed in the Mustang or mastering whatever recipe the Julia Child rerun is offering. Perhaps if Roberta could spy on their next advertised meeting she could . . .

Get a bop on the head. Suffer amnesia. Exchange identities with the desperately sought Susan (played by Madonna, whose affectlessness in the face of adversity may or may not constitute acting but is marvelously comic). Find herself pursued by one of organized crime's less organized branches. Fall into a loft and a love affair with the projectionist from a kung fu grind house. Find work as a gloriously addled magician's assistant. Get mistaken by the police for a prostitute. In other words, there is more to Roberta's modest attempt at an afternoon's adventure than she bargained for.

And there is more to this movie, the work of young barely knowns, than audiences may bargain for in a time when adolescent frenzy is often mistaken for comedy. One guesses that Screenwriter Barish or Director Seidelman was raised in Roberta's world, escaped to Susan's funk scene in lower Manhattan, and lived not just to tell both tales but to process them coolly and ironically. There is not a desperate frame in Desperately Seeking Susan--no anger, no false sentiment, no patronizing. Like the screwball comedies of yore, it places entirely probable people in a highly improbable situation and requires that they consult their own sorely tested inner logic to find a way out.

Arquette's instincts for this kind of comedy are superb. She is a beautiful dreamer walking through a minefield, at once vulnerable and invincible--and just possibly the funny lady the world has been wanting to cuddle up with for years. In Seidelman she has an admirably laconic director who trusts her material, her impeccably cast actors and herself. In other words she does not lead the laughter at her own jokes. How nice it is to go to a farcically fizzing movie that bursts with youthful high spirits yet still treats you like a functioning adult. By Richard Schickel