DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN (1985) **1/2 Many years ago, before Madonna had any interest in communing with her inner-God, she was more into channeling something akin to her inner Miles Davis: "Cool" as the ultimate and all-encompassing virtue. And she was pretty good at it. Not an absolute natural-like Patti Smith and Nina Simone-but she had the general idea down, and she works her two greatest attributes in spades: intelligence and determination. And that's why 25 years later she's one of the most famous women in the world, and her MTV pop diva contemporaries are forgotten or-even worse-punchlines. It's a comfortable, silly little mystery movie (the déjà vu line is one of my favorites in any film, ever), but it's all that, and more than that because she communicates well that it's important what she decides to wear next, and who and what she might deign worthy of attention. This admittedly works so well because our (more sensible) totem Rosanna Arquette believes it; clearly more beautiful and talented, but something...missing something. And so it's Rosanna who delivers the moral of the story: interesting people shouldn't spend too much time with dull people, unless they want to. Stay young, there's no such thing as old, not on this planet.
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