HELP WANTED! PUH-LEEZE! I'm an actress with great refs, awards galore, star quality. Can play comedy or drama, aristocrat or working girl, sweet or sexy, any or all of the above. Critics love me, and moviegoers too. But my career's in neutral. Chewy female roles are hard to come by if your name isn't Meryl Streep. Still, I have lots to offer. What can Hollywood offer me?
Starlight is capricious. Its beam falls on the worthy and the fortunate, then moves restlessly on. In the era of the omnipotent film studios, performers were cushioned by long-term contracts and paternalistic moguls. A career was built through steady work in look-alike roles. But in these free-for-all days, actors -- and especially actresses -- are on their own. They are defined more as artists than as stars; they market their craft, not their luminous personalities. They may win star parts or, on a lark, show up in cameo roles. They may take a year off to work in the theater or have a baby. The easy momentum of the golden age has vanished in an industry where most of the box- office breadwinners are men, and an actress's career rides on an audience's whim. The combustible element used to be star meets star; now it is star finds perfect role. But what if too many good actresses are scrambling for too few good scripts?
Debra Winger, Amy Irving, Rosanna Arquette: moviemakers should be begging to ! snare these actresses for fat and sassy leading roles. No such luck. Irving has for a dozen years commuted easily between stage (Amadeus, The Road to Mecca) and screen (Carrie, Yentl), but movies have rarely caught her witchy allure. Arquette seemed a cinch for stardom after Desperately Seeking Susan, but her elfin sensuality has proved too weird for mainstream fare. As for the wondrous Winger, she anchored three big hits of the early '80s. But after Urban Cowboy, An Officer and a Gentleman and Terms of Endearment, her career loitered. Nobody saw Mike's Murder; nobody needed to see Legal Eagles. She was outglammed by Theresa Russell in Black Widow and nearly unrecognizable as a hobo angel in Made in Heaven.
What's a gal to do? Take what she can get, work hard and hope. The three new, earnest, off-Hollywood movies from this star-worthy trio -- Irving's Crossing Delancey, Arquette's The Big Blue and Winger's Betrayed -- suggest that when a project has doom scrawled across it, even an incandescent actress can't save the day. If her luck breaks even, maybe she can save herself.
There is no salvation for Irving in Director Joan Micklin Silver's Crossing Delancey. The star, playing a Manhattan bookstore manager named Isabelle Grossman, is made to look tired and behave with moral myopia. Can't Isabelle see that the European author (Jeroen Krabbe) who courts her is just one more serpent-eyed wordsmith who would flatter a pretty woman's intellect to soften her resolve? Can't she tell that sweet-souled Sam Posner (Peter Riegert), a pickle salesman from the old neighborhood, is the guy for her? Isabelle's Yiddishe grandma (Reizl Bozyk) can tell, in cliches that fall from her lips like ripe plums.