TCM had a spotlight on "Body Images in Film" a couple of months ago, which gave me the chance to watch another new-to-me movie, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. I recently got around to watching it.
Liza Minnelli plays Junie Moon, who at the start of the movie is in the hospital, having suffered burns on an arm and one side of her face, which have required quite a few skin grafts. Eventually we learn, in flashback, that Junie liked to go out with a bunch of different men, and one of them raped her in a graveyard and deliberately poured battery acid all over her face and arm. But right now, she's getting to the point that there's not much more the doctors can do for her, so she's about to be discharged from the hospital.
During her time in the hospital, she's made a couple of friends. Warren (Robert Moore) is a gay man in a wheelchair, having been paralyzed from the waist down in an accident. Arthur (Ken Howard) has some sort of epilepsy-like disease that results in seizures and a lot of people thinking he's intellectually challenged. Indeed, his parents put him in a state-run institution that was torture for him, and to an extent he was never really able to grow up mentally.
Warren is in some ways a very forward man, in contrast to the introversion of Junie post-rape and especially Arthur. Warren has a plan that he's going to get the three of them on welfare and find them a place to live where the misfits can live together. Junie is the first of the three to get out, and she finds a cottage in nearby Manchester, MA. She's even able to convince the house's owner, Miss Gregory (Kay Thompson) to let the three of them rent it.
Unfortunately, the three of them aren't going to get the chance to live happily ever after. They've got a really nosy neighbor in Mr. Wyner, as well as still having health issues and the need to get a job. You'd think Junie might be able to get something not customer-facing; likewise Warren could do desk work. But it's Arthur who goes looking for work, eventually finding it with bachelor Mario (James Coco), who runs the local fish market. But Wyner tries to sabotage that.
Mario begins to have sympathy for the oddball household, even offering to help them take a vacation, although it's Warren who scams the hoity-toity beach resort out of a free weekend stay. While there, Arthur begins to realize he's falling in love with Junie although she's not so ready; Warren falls in love with one of the bellboy-types (Fred Williamson) whose job it is to make the guests happy.
Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon is an odd little movie, and it's easy to see why it wasn't commercially successful. And indeed, sometimes the movie is too quirky for its own good. It's the sort of movie that you have to be willing to stick with, and by the end you might find out that it's better than the criticism would have led you to believe.
1 comment:
Quirky is an excellent word to describe the film. It was something that I appreciated more than loved but it's story was compelling and it contains one of Liza's best performances. She's a talented woman but too oddly unique to be able to play anything outside of a very specific type. Whatever easily relatable quality her mother had didn't get passed on.
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