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    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1980s
    Movies - 1980s Movies - D 2 Mins Read

    Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)

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    Amnesia, mistaken identities and danger befall a bored housewife who becomes involved with a free-spirited young woman.

    Rosanna Arquette plays Roberta Glass, a bored Yuppie housewife from Fort Lee, New Jersey who gets romantic kicks by reading the personal ads in the New York Times. For some time, she’s been intrigued by secret messages from a guy named Jim who is “desperately seeking” a girl named Susan.

    Suffocating in a shopping mall world of plastic values and mediocre materialism, Roberta decides to investigate by spying on a rendezvous between Susan (Madonna) and Jim (Robert Joy) at Battery Park.

    Susan is junk-shop couture, punk rock idealism, and Day-Glo glitter. Roberta is suburban sensible, with a smart pageboy, a shoulder-strap Lois Lane handbag, and a wardrobe from Bamberger’s.

    But then Roberta knocks herself out and wakes up thinking she is Susan.

    Susan’s rock singer boyfriend, Jim, assigns his pal Des (Aidan Quinn), a projectionist at the Bleecker Street Cinema, to protect her. Des falls in love with Roberta, thinking she’s Susan. To complicate things, Roberta, who doesn’t know who she is, becomes Divina, Queen of the Night, in a magic show.

    Pursued down filthy alleys in a purple tutu with a shopping bag in one hand and a cage full of doves in the other, arrested by the cops for soliciting, and stalked by a homicidal maniac, Roberta sinks deeper into an acute identity confusion.

    seekingsusan12

    As the plot gets crazier, the movie grows more fascinating. Now everybody’s desperately seeking Roberta including her square hot-tub salesman husband Gary (Mark Blum) – and the only clue poor Roberta has to unlock the mystery is a key to a locker at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

    The backdrop of New York is exquisitely high-tech contemporary: Mohawk haircuts, surreal discos, spaced-out punk extras, the iridescently lit world of midnight neon where Roberta ends up in Susan’s spike heels.

    What is supposed to pass as farce, becomes sidetracked with excessive complications and the story eventually loses momentum.

    seekingsusan15Mark Blum died in March 2020 as a result of coronavirus complications. He was 69.

    Roberta Glass
    Rosanna Arquette
    Susan

    Madonna
    Des

    Aidan Quinn
    Jim

    Robert Joy
    Gary Glass
    Mark Blum
    Leslie Glass
    Laurie Metcalf
    Crystal
    Anna Levine
    Wayne Nolan
    Will Patton
    Ian
    Peter Maloney
    Larry Stillman
    Steven Wright
    Ray
    John Turturro
    Victoria
    Anne Carlisle
    Bruce Meeker
    Richard Hell
    Daisy
    Daisy Bradford

    Director
    Susan Seidelman

    Video

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