Kiss Me Goodbye

I mentioned recently that there were a couple of movies in the FXM rotation that I hadn't blogged about before, so I'd record them and watch for the next time they showed up. One of those movies is Kiss Me Goodbye. Needless to say, this being FXM, the movies in the rotation get repeated a lot until they're removed from the rotation, so it isn't taking long for it to show up again. That next airing comes tomorrow (April 28) at 1:15 PM.

Sally Field plays Kay Villano, who is walking back to her Manhattan townhouse as the movie begins. Except, when she gets in the house, all the furniture is covered. Apparently she hasn't lived in the house for some time (you wonder how she could afford the taxes on it to leave it empty for five years), while her mother Charlotte (Claire Trevor at the end of her career) isn't so certain it's a good thing for Kay to be moving back in.

Kay is engaged to Rupert (Jeff Bridges), an Egyptologist at one of the Manhattan museums. Kay, one presumes, hopes that Rupert will move in to the townhouse after the wedding; after all, it's big enough for both of them to have working space. But at the same time, Kay seems to be having flashbacks about the house and the reason why she hasn't lived there in five years. She and her first husband, Broadway director Jolly (James Caan) were giving a party for Broadway types at the townhouse, when Jolly tripped and fell down the stairs, killing him! It's a tragic memory, and now it's understandable why everyone around Kay asks her whether she really wants to live here again.

If those memories aren't bad enough, things are about to get a whole lot worse. One day while she's showing Rupert the place, she's up in the second floor bedroom while Rupert is in a different portion of the house. And what does she see but Jolly. But wait, he's supposed to be dead. And since he's been dead for five years and everybody saw it happen, we know that is is really most sincerely dead. So Jolly very kindly informs Kay that he is what humans would generally think of as a ghost, although in this version of the ghost story ghosts don't do things like creak and moan to try to scare people off.

But while Jolly is able to carry on a conversation with Kay, nobody else is able to see or hear Jolly. Rupert comes back into the room, and hears Kay carrying on a conversation with empty space as far as he's concerned. Now, the logical thing to do would be for Kay to ask the people around her if they believe in ghosts because she's getting the feeling the ghost of Jolly is inhabiting the townhouse. And to be fair, she does eventually tell Rupert the ghost of Jolly is around. But for the most part the doesn't ignore Jolly so that when she talks to him everybody else wonders what the hell is wrong with Kay.

Rupert eventually goes along with the delusion, in part because Jolly proves his existence because of the one power these ghosts to have, which is to get inside people's heads and learn things that someone like Rupert has never told Kay, and then have Kay bring these things up with Rupert. But Rupert can't get Kay to stop thinking about Jolly and start thinking about him, especially when the three of them go on a trip to the country where a bed and breakfast owner (Mildred Natwick) and a married couple are.

How is the romantic conflict going to get resolved? Well, you're just going to have to watch the movie for yourself to find out. From what I've read, James Caan had extremely bad things to say about the movie. I think he's being unfair. Kiss Me Goodbye isn't the greatest movie ever made, and it's a bit tough to be truly original with this sort of ghost story. But it's nowhere near as bad as Caan seemed to be implying. It's watchable enough, and enjoyable to see everybody in it, especially the elder Trevor and Natwick. So give Kiss Me Goobye a chance.