MAY 20, 1994 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

13

ENTERTAINMENT

Stonewashed denim film adaptation makes you blue

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues Directed by Gus Van Sant

Reviewed by Charlton Harper

Since it's summertime, prepare yourself now for the avalanche of Hollywood tripe about to descend upon you and yours. Brace yourself. You know what to expect. There'll be those dog days in July when the decision to see the latest techno-blockbuster is made purely on condition of A.C. factor: the theater has air-conditioning, your house does not.

Yet there will be a few films that will manage to grab some attention, if only because something more is to be hoped from them.

But unfortunately, in the case of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, it may be something less.

Director Gus Van Sant's latest effort (and effort is a good word; rarely does this film soar), is a film adaptation of Tom Robbins' 1970's bestseller. For months we've been treated to Entertainment Tonight snippets and Hollywood rumors about the post-production problems with Cowgirls. Van Sant not only rewrote the screenplay several times, but re-edited it at least twice. Still, the seams show.

Cowgirls follows the wanderings and meanderings of Sissy Hankshaw (Uma Thurman), a beautiful woman with thumbs as big as bananas, perfect for a life of hitchhiking. Sissy, a modern-day Huck Finn, responds to the lure of the free life on the road. She cuts out whenever things get too staid or tough or just plain stuffy. Occasionally she's a model for the flamboyant Countess and his outdated feminine hygiene products. When the Countess sends Sissy to Oregon to film a commercial at his beauty spa, the Rubber Rose Ranch, it launches an awakening of Sissy's womanhood and identity.

Robbins' novel is a huge stew of bizarre characters, burgeoning '70's feminist issues, psychedelic philosophy and crass material greed. Take these elements and wrap them in an effusive, flowery literary style that almost defies film, and you've got some problems.

Chopping this sprawling novel down to a size that audiences can deal with is a big part of what's wrong. So much gets left out, and what gets left in floats in a disconnected void that leaves the viewer guessing at details. When Sissy arrives at the Rubber Rose, a wild pack of cowgirls is threatening to wrestle the ranch away from the paternalistic grip of the Countess and his chauvinistic view of what it is to be Woman. The cowgirls want to save the ranch for the whooping cranes that come to nest there year after year, one of the only stops the cranes make on the North American conti-

nent. The freedom of the cranes becomes a metaphor for the cowgirls themselves. Yet when the girls eventually run the Countess and his ranch manager Miss Adrian (Angie Dickinson) off the property, rather than idealistic revolutionaries, they seem like nothing more than small-time bullies. Too much of the cowgirls and their exploits on the ranch has been left on the editing room floor. Later, we're parceled out small doses of the real convictions and beliefs that move these women to take control of their lives, to make a stand.

The Sissy we see on screen is not always the Sissy we become absorbed with in reading the novel. This Sissy hardly speaks at all and is left more an impassive observer of the activity around her than an actual participant. When Sissy tries to run away from herself by having plastic surgery to shorten her thumbs, we get little sense of the struggle inside her. It seems more like "hey, why not get my thumbs shortened."

The movie isn't helped by a poor standard of acting throughout. Thurman looks the part, dreamy doe-eyed, on some other plane of consciousness most of the time. But her delivery is as stale as crackers left out over night. Rain Phoenix, River's sister, as Bonanza Jellybean isn't much better. Angie Dickinson is still re-hashing her role as Pepper on Police Woman. I had more hopes for her. John Hurt as the Countess is the one consistent spark here, the grandest, campiest Miss Thing since Quentin Crisp. (He obviously learned a thing or two from playing Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant.)

What is so wonderful, so great about this film is its unflinching embrace of assertive female identity. Thankfully Van Sant did not take any crap about toning down the cowgirls, or the sexual intimacy and love between Sissy and Bonanza. While watching Cowgirls I found myself remembering the February 25 Chronicle interview between Doreen Cudnik and lesbian filmmaker Nicole Conn, director of Claire of the Moon. Cudnik said it best: "How many of us, even though they totally downplayed the lesbian theme in Fried Green Tomatoes, have seen it 15 times because it just doesn't happen that often that we see our lives on the screen?"

Many lesbians will be drawn to Cowgirls for the honest glimpse of woman-love. Remember though, Cowgirls is not a lesbian film. Sex and love here are more a fluid '70's sort of thing. Kind of “if it feels good, do it."

But again there's a big problem here: When will we see this kind of effort and these resources at the disposal of women filmmakers making these big picture stories about women? God forbid we ever see actual lesbian directors in the big league.

It's discouraging that in addition to a male director filming a story about women,

ABIGAYLE TARSCHES

Delores Del Ruby (Lorraine Bracco), Bonanza Jellybean (Rain Phoenix) and Heather (Heather Graham) are just a few of the cowgirls chasing the blues away in Gus Van Sant's latest film.

from a novel written by a man, we also get a tired narrative voice-over by Tom Robbins himself. For all the talk about female identity, the doctor should have taken his own medicine. Robbins' narration is nothing more than an acknowledgment of the screenplay's failures. It's a typical problem when adapting a novel. Merchant and Ivory have never resorted to this gimmick in their adaptations of E. M. Forster's novels (Room with a View, Howard's End), but Scorsese did with Age of Innocence. Someone should

let Van Sant know it never works.

You're on your own with this one. Occasionally Van Sant achieves the serene, almost out-of-body moments that made My Own Private Idaho so great. For the most part though, his film is more a plug for the novel; read it instead. Better yet, if it's the honest-to-goddess real thing you're wanting, a lesbian film by a lesbian filmmaker, set yourself for the Fall release of Go Fish. So far the rumors have it that it's the genuine thing.

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