Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979, Joan Micklin Silver) (Patreon)

66/100

A remarkably acute portrait of the wounded male psyche (expertly conceived, adapted and directed by women), complex to a degree that might well be impossible nowadays. Crucially, this isn't simply about an obsessed dude stalking an ex who's returned to her husband and wants to be left alone; Beattie and Micklin Silver make Laura somewhat complicit in Charles' fixation, not blaming her—or even him, really—so much as just acknowledging the messy reality of human relationships. Both Heard and Hurt are tremendous, planting seeds of the couple's issues in their flirtatious flashback banter, allowing the characters to be fucked up in ways that are simultaneously charming and alarming. Charles buys Laura a rocking chair, rejects every spot in her apartment that she suggests for it, then "jokingly" claims it as his own...all of which plays as lightly funny (Heard maintains a level of brash self-confidence that's attractive rather than obnoxious—damn hard to pull off!) while speaking to his self-centered possessiveness. Laura gets indignant when Charles unexpectedly shows up at her home, posing as a customer for an A-frame, but her eyes briefly light up when he drops the façade and informs her husband that he loves her. Telling the story strictly from Charles' perspective arguably hinders its power a bit; had Micklin Silver diverged even more from Beattie's novel (while perhaps sticking with its ending, as the Head Over Heels cut apparently did), she might have created a more naturalistic Modern Romance, with Vietnam relevant not by dint of being a no-win situation, but by representing sheer inextricability. 

As is, there's more Beattie here than I'd prefer. Charles' voiceover narration and occasional fourth-wall breaks (which I assume are a means of including some of the book's internal monologue) only serve as a clumsy distraction from the film's otherwise scrupulously realistic tone; I waited in vain for him to tell us directly something that Heard's performance doesn't communicate obliquely on its own, without that assist. And while it's always a pleasure to see Gloria Grahame (and Kenneth McMillan), Micklin Silver never quite figures out how to make Charles' mother relevant to an adaptation in which his abortive romance with Laura serves as the clear focal point, rather than as (I gather) just one hassle of many. For a movie that barely dents 90 minutes, there's a lot that feels extraneous. Which makes the absence of any real ending all the more frustrating. Granted, it's entirely possible that I'd have despised Head Over Heels' final scene (which doesn't appear to exist online), in the same way that I recently found Shithouse's happy ending a sorry betrayal of what had preceded it. But just lopping that reunion off and rolling the end credits over a freeze-frame of Charles cooling off after his run—cathartic though the exercise may have been for him—didn't do the trick. (Except commercially, I guess.) Feels as arbitrary as it in fact is. In short, a very good film held back from greatness by misguided fidelity to the source material plus—a twist on my usual complaint!—belated infidelity to the source material meant to solve the problem, which doesn't work because the problem is structural, not modular. I'd heartily welcome a slew of contemporary movies just like it. 

QUICK UPDATE ON THE ORIGINAL ENDING, WHICH I HAVE NOW WATCHED: Like I said, structural problem. That's a super-corny resolution, not remotely satisfying unless one perceives it as Charles' fantasy, similar to the way that he imagines Laura fixing his glasses in the film's opening minutes. But you then have to believe that he's fantasizing a scenario that he just deliberately chose to make impossible (via his ultimatum, which in the reconceived version of the film I guess is meant to come across as strength of character rather than needless pushiness). I dunno. I like the film but it seems crippled to me in both incarnations.