The Sterile Cuckoo

A trope of romantic movies for decades has been the free-spirited woman meeting the uptight man and the two falling in love. Back in the 1930s, it was screwball comedies, but in later years the women didn't necessarily have to be heiresses, or rich at all. And you could get darker movies too, as I recently saw when I watched The Sterile Cuckoo.

The movie opens with Pookie Adams (Liza Minnelli) sitting at a bus stop with her father to get on a bus to go to her college somewhere in central New York. Already on that bus, and also going off to college, is Jerry Payne (Wendell Burton), although the two go to different colleges a few miles away. Pookie sees Jerry and, despite never having met him, decides she's going to pursue him romantically the way that Katharine Hepburn goes after Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby. She's not going to take no for an answer, and gets one of the other passengers to change seats by lying that she and Jerry are brother and sister who are on ther way back from their grandmother's funeral!

Now, such things like that ought to set off red flags and blaring alarm sirens for Jerry. But he's captive on a bus where he can't really get away from Pookie, who isn't going to take no for an answer anyway. That, and Jerry is likely beginning to think with his little head instead of his big one. So when Pookie continues to contact him at school after he gets off the bus, he eventually gives in and decides to see her again.

The two start arranging trysts at various places in and around central New York, the movie having been largely filmed on location. And, they even get undressed and have sex, because sex has been on both of their minds, what with their being young and full of hormones. Jerry, however, starts to have some nagging doubts in his mind. How is he going to break the news to his parents? What if they don't like Pookie? The fact that later in the movie, he's told how his grades are suffering and it's going to require him to stay on over spring break, gives him further doubts.

But Pookie is determined, clingy, and manipulative. So she announces sometime between about Thanksgiving and Christmas break that she thinks she's missed her period and must be pregnant as a result. That's a serious thing, especially 50 years ago when there were much stronger stigmas surrounding both abortion and out of wedlock childbirth. But after Christmas, Pookie simply announces that she's no longer pregnant. And when Jerry asks what exactly happened -- was it a false alarm; did she have a miscarriage; and did she see a doctor -- Pookie simply won't answer those questions. Talk about your red flags!

Following a party where Pookie gets so drunk she embarrasses herself, Jerry, and his roommate Charlie (Tim McIntire), Jerry finally gets the gumption to suggest that perhaps the two of them should take a little time to be alone instead of together. And Pookie responds by simply dropping out of life all together! Why would anybody want to see her if she ever showed her face again?

The huge issue I had with The Sterile Cuckoo is how Pookie is just such a nasty, dislikeable character, but one the script argues we're supposed to look at as romantically kooky. We're supposed to root for these characters to wind up together in the last reel, instead of hoping that Jerry will learn from Bette Davis in Old Acquaintance and literally shake some sense into Pookie like Bette did to Miriam Hopkins. No! This woman has mentally unstable written all over her, and throws up one red flag after the other!

Liza Minnelli got an Oscar nomination, and to be fair to her, her performance is good -- it's just the script that's an absolute mess. The location shooting is pretty, but a lot of the camerawork feels to me like it's stuck in 1960s techniques (although I don't recall any ridiculous zooms of the sort that became a thing in the 1960s).

If you're OK with the sort of character Pookie is being whitewashed, then you'll probably enjoy The Sterile Cuckoo. If, like me, you're not, then you've been warned.