The fur­ther dimen­sions of Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Susan

Direc­tor Susan Seidelman’s sec­ond fea­ture, Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Susan, had var­i­ous big names attached to it in pre­pro­duc­tion. At one point Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn were in talks for the lead roles. Melanie Grif­fith, Jen­nifer Jason Leigh and singer Susanne Vega were also con­sid­ered for the role of Susan, before the part even­tu­al­ly went to the biggest female pop star on the plan­et, Madon­na, with Rosan­na Arquette chas­ing her coat tails as Roberta.

As with Seidelman’s debut fea­ture, Smithereens, Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Susan focus­es on a female pro­tag­o­nist liv­ing in New York City. Apply­ing spit and pol­ish to her grit­ty aes­thet­ic and adding some star qual­i­ty to the mix, the direc­tor was able to con­fi­dent­ly shift from a work that sat com­fort­ably along­side Jim Jarmusch’s ear­ly films to cre­ate some­thing more main­stream and digestible while suc­cess­ful­ly cap­tur­ing the zeit­geist of the ear­ly ​’80s. This is the sto­ry of two women whose worlds col­lide amid mar­riage trou­ble, mem­o­ry loss and a pair of valu­able miss­ing ear­rings. At the time many crit­ics labelled the film a ​‘screw­ball com­e­dy’, but beneath its sur­face there are fur­ther dimen­sions to explore.

As the title sug­gests, Susan is both need­ed and want­ed, where­as Rober­ta is locked into a stag­nant mar­riage. Her per­son­al des­per­a­tion is evi­dent in the open­ing sequence, where she sits in a salon sur­round­ed by a gag­gle of house­wives. Roberta’s eager redis­cov­ery of Susan in the clas­si­fieds gives her a glimpse of a life beyond the con­straints of tra­di­tion­al wed­lock. Lat­er, when cel­e­brat­ing her husband’s career suc­cess­es at a house par­ty, Rober­ta catch­es her pathet­ic reflec­tion and is met by the image of a mun­dane, trapped Fort Lee house­wife. But then, as New York City glis­tens in the dis­tance, she expe­ri­ences a pre­mo­ni­tion of a new life, and her reflec­tion becomes an alter­nate iden­ti­ty, one void of the restric­tions of mar­riage. After the par­ty she sits alone in the kitchen watch­ing Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebec­ca, and recog­nis­es her­self in the fatal tale of a wife unable to live up to her husband’s expectations.

Madon­na was a huge star in 1985, and the role she plays in Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Susan is not too far removed from the per­sona she adopt­ed through­out the decade. It is like­ly that a large por­tion of the audi­ence were Madon­na fans and Rober­ta, like them, is kept at arms length, first glimps­ing Susan through a coin oper­at­ed tele­scope before can­did­ly stalk­ing her across the city. This is where Roberta’s char­ac­ter becomes relat­able as her posi­tion mir­rors that of a mild­ly obses­sive fan. Rober­ta then pro­ceeds to mim­ic her idol, until her amne­sia enables her to become Susan completely.

Susan is a strong, sex­u­al and self-con­fi­dent woman. We are intro­duced to her as she rolls around on a hotel bed tak­ing pic­tures of her­self with a polaroid cam­era. She tucks a self­ie into her jack­et pock­et, before pinch­ing some valu­able ear­rings and tak­ing off in her hat and sun­glass­es, as though the paparazzi wait­ing for her out­side. She steps off the bus as if she expects to be mobbed by a scream­ing crowd, and while treat­ing the pub­lic toi­lets as her per­son­al dress­ing room, manoeu­vres her­self with the self assur­ance of a woman who wants for nothing.

How­ev­er, we soon find out that Susan doesn’t even have a bed to sleep in. Lat­er, upon dis­cov­er­ing that the van­i­ty case con­tain­ing her only belong­ings has been stolen, she shows no sign of being a bro­ken woman; the same can be said when she finds out that her for­mer lover has been mur­dered. Her for­mi­da­ble brava­do adds to her appeal and fuels Roberta’s obses­sion. Such a char­ac­ter could sim­ply not exist in the age of social media. Susan is inde­pen­dent and self-suf­fi­cient to the extent that although she has a boyfriend, she shows no real com­mit­ment to him. She is ful­ly in con­trol of her life, going where she wants, when she wants, tak­ing what she wants (ear­rings, news­pa­pers, cig­a­rettes, clothes and cab rides) and answer­ing to no one.

Sei­del­man has spo­ken about the influ­ence of Jaques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boat­ing on Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Susan, which she also noticed in Leo­ra Barish’s screen­play. The pair pay homage to Riv­ette through­out the film, most notably with the iden­ti­ty switch, the Mag­ic Club and in the sequence where Rober­ta ini­tial­ly fol­lows Susan in the same qua­si far­ci­cal way that Julie (Dominique Labouri­er) trails Celine (Juli­et Berto).

In the orig­i­nal end­ing (which can be found on cer­tain DVD ver­sions of the film), Rober­ta and Susan are seen rid­ing a pair of camels across a bar­ren desert, which only real­ly makes sense with Celine and Julie in mind. Out of con­text this final shot makes lit­tle sense, yet in light of Rivette’s influ­ence it is some­what jus­ti­fied when you con­sid­er the sig­nif­i­cance of the pyra­mid embroi­dered on Susan’s jack­et – cru­cial­ly worn in the scene not by Susan but Rober­ta. The pyra­mid is Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Susan’s fig­u­ra­tive White Rab­bit and with Susan now fol­low­ing, it appears the pair have switched roles and are delv­ing deep­er into their own rabbit-hole.

Fol­low­ing poor audi­ence test screen­ings, the camels were left on the cut­ting room floor. The final ver­sion of the final ends in a cin­e­ma where Susan and Jim (Robert Joy) watch Ib Melichor’s The Time Trav­ellers, in which the char­ac­ters trav­el through time and inci­den­tal­ly cre­ate mul­ti­ple selves. The rab­bit-hole the­o­ry is again sub­tly allud­ed to as the film on the cin­e­ma screen burns out, cre­at­ing its very own visu­al por­tal, per­haps invit­ing us to look fur­ther into the film, or, as Susan final­ly demon­strates, to just sit back, put your feet up and enjoy it.