Movies
Far North
Directorial debut of playwright and scenarist, plus actor and sex symbol, Sam Shepard. This inveterate snooper into family closets, or family laundry hampers and trash cans, has here travelled for that purpose to the home country of his real-life mate -- northern Minnesota and Jessica Lange respectively. Whatever fascinating secrets lie buried within this family have remained pretty well underground. The fascinating ones, at any rate, have. There is a certain amount of clunking contact, as between the shovel and the clavicle in the vegetable patch, with some utterly unfascinating ones. What comes clear is that Northerners can be every bit as caricaturistically dotty as any sub-Faulkner, sub-Tennessee Williams Southerners; or anyway, that caricaturistic portrayals of them as dotty can be every bit as lifeless and unlifelike, as insufferably arch and patronizing, as strained and unfunny. Shepard tosses in a sufficient number of shock cuts, free-association flashbacks, concrete fantasies, and the like, to liberate himself from the bounds of theater, but not from the bounds of theatricality. With Tess Harper and Charles Durning. 1988.
Reader Rating:
MPAA Rating: PG-13
