Smooth Talk pits an ado­les­cent Lau­ra Dern against pri­mal Amer­i­can evil

For het­ero­sex­u­al young women pro­cess­ing their first flash­es of pubes­cent yearn­ing, a lethal para­dox lies in wait. A man can be the most desir­able thing the imag­i­na­tion can con­jure, want itself made pure and human, a fan­ta­sy potent enough to dom­i­nate all wak­ing thought and dic­tate just about every choice a teenag­er makes. All it takes is one unset­tling moment, how­ev­er, to remind these same bud­ding women that the men they lust after can harm them.

The war­ring impuls­es that define ear­ly ado­les­cence – an excit­ed curios­i­ty about a much-tout­ed sex­u­al­i­ty, mixed with trep­i­da­tion about the adult and unfa­mil­iar – take on graver stakes with girls, forced as they are to safe­guard them­selves against a mas­cu­line cul­ture of pre­da­tion and vio­la­tion. It’s a stan­dard bul­let point for distaff com­ing-of-age movies to hit; think back to how quick­ly Eighth Grade​‘s car scene piv­ots, as thir­teen-year-old Kay­la goes from feel­ing cool while rid­ing unsu­per­vised in a car with a boy to fend­ing off his advances in a mat­ter of moments.

Joyce Chopra’s 1985 fea­ture debut Smooth Talk sit­u­ates itself in the anx­i­ety between a brac­ing car­nal free­dom and the chill­ing aware­ness of its haz­ards, then rais­es the ten­sion to an unbear­able inten­si­ty. To the direc­tor as well as Joyce Car­ol Oates, writer of the short sto­ry on which the script was based, the essence of matur­ing lies in the hot-run­ning fear that must accom­pa­ny irre­sistible horni­ness. The film’s first half gives us one of cinema’s most indeli­ble images of a boy-crazy girl’s ini­tial flir­ta­tion with, well, flir­ta­tion; like a theory’s corol­lary, the sec­ond pulls the inevitable 180 into a stand­off with the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the evil that men do.

At the ten­der age of eigh­teen, a large­ly pre-fame Lau­ra Dern was ripe to embody the coquet­tish pre­coc­i­ty of Con­nie Wyatt (three years junior to the actress play­ing her). She gave a star-mak­ing turn in her first go as a lead, mes­mer­iz­ing with her teased-out hair and sug­ges­tive bodice-by-way-of-Lisa-Frank hal­ter top. A fount of con­fi­dence, Con­nie prowls through the mall and sizes up the local guys through eager eyes, hun­gry even if she’s not yet sure what for. Chopra’s care­ful direc­tion nev­er shames the social but­ter­fly for court­ing atten­tion as she struts through the food court, instead shar­ing in the thrill of com­mand­ing some­one else’s eyes, and pos­si­bly more.

But that’s only her out­er­most lay­er, an earnest front con­ceal­ing the naïveté that ris­es to the sur­face at the first sign of dan­ger. When she final­ly agrees to a date with one of the area boy­toys, he gets handsy and she instant­ly shrinks up at this con­fronta­tion with the frank real­i­ties of sex. The bril­liance of Dern’s per­for­mance hides in how eas­i­ly she can drop the provoca­tive exte­ri­or with­out mak­ing it seem like a façade she was putting on. Con­nie knows what she wants, and she does want it, but she didn’t know it would be like this. She wasn’t ready.

Her appre­hen­sion turns to out­right ter­ror at the mid­way mark, a tran­si­tion all the more jar­ring and dis­ori­ent­ing for its total for­mal dis­con­nect from the rest of the film. The first seg­ment plays like an unusu­al­ly art­ful and fine­ly detailed John Hugh­es project, toe­ing the line between the char­ac­ters’ care­free school years and the grown-up world they’re bar­rel­ing toward. The sec­ond is min­i­mal, terse, and so fright­en­ing as to bor­der on horror.

We’re as tak­en off guard as Con­nie is by the appear­ance of Arnold Friend, a James Dean-styled hunk of red-blood­ed Amer­i­cana in the chis­eled shape of Treat Williams. She’s has been left alone at home while her fam­i­ly goes off to a cook­out, and he mate­ri­al­izes in seem­ing response to her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. He should be the beef­cake of her dreams, but their dia­logue shiv­ers with the insin­u­a­tion of violence.

She speaks to him at length through the screen door, a flim­sy sym­bol of how lit­tle con­trol she has over this pas de deux (unless you count the goon in Arnold’s car who he occa­sion­al­ly screams at to pipe down, punc­tur­ing the snake-charmer spell he’s try­ing to cast). We don’t know what hap­pens once he dri­ves off with her and she returns a changed woman, but we can safe­ly assume the worst.

Chopra’s direc­tion, which empha­sizes the con­stant­ly shrink­ing spaces that divide Con­nie from Arnold, turns this pro­tract­ed unwel­come come-on into a duel with a malev­o­lent, ele­men­tal force in league with Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter. This film deserves to be men­tioned in the same breath as Charles Laughton’s clas­sic, anoth­er work that puts the bat­tle for a soul into mor­tal terms uncom­fort­ably com­mon. From what could’ve been dis­missed as friv­o­lous girl stuff – and was, by many at the time – we bear wit­ness to a great reck­on­ing between bur­geon­ing wom­an­hood and the soci­ety intent on con­sum­ing it.

The new 4K restora­tion get­ting a run in Amer­i­can vir­tu­al cin­e­mas this week­end does a great ser­vice by boost­ing the pro­file of a major work from an artist who nev­er got her due. Though Chopra com­plet­ed her fol­low-up The Lemon Sis­ters in 1990 and her episode of Law and Order: SVU is superb, she didn’t get the fair shake she deserved in Hol­ly­wood, hav­ing spent the past decade in TV. Her tri­umph will now receive the plat­form it mer­its, and a new gen­er­a­tion can find their place in an eter­nal conflict.

The new restora­tion of Smooth Talk pre­mieres in the US on 6 Novem­ber on Film at Lin­coln Center’s vir­tu­al cin­e­ma.