Choose Me 4K 1984

Mickey, a complex character, escapes from a mental institution to visit his past, but instead finds a new girlfriend Eva, meets another married girl, but goes to bed with a third - radio host Nancy Love. Intrigue - which of the girls will agree to Mickey's proposal to marry him, because that's exactly what he does after kissing each of them once?

Alan Rudolph suffers from retromania. So serious that shooting “Choose Me” in his native eighties, I, the viewer, constantly had to remind myself of it. The deliberately lubotic scenery breathes languor, sensual exoticism. The arteries of “Choose Me”, a neighborhood night bar “Eva's”, Rudolph fills with Negroes and Negroes, customers and prostitutes, in brightly colored tights, lazily sipping cigarettes, also lazily and naturally they merge in a kiss. The funky “Choose me”, the title theme of the movie, which could only be sung by Negroes with such natural eroticism, adds fuel to the fire of the relationship between three women and three men, the label “Melrose Place” or “Beverly Hills” pops up on the screen, but the intonation, my darlings, the intonation makes the cheap candy.

“Pick Me” is a thoughtful piece of work. And every one of Rudolph's musings is full of irony, but it's just as full of longing. There is one magical moment in the movie, when talking to Lesley Ann Warren on the other end of the phone Genevieve Bugeaud suddenly appears behind her back in her office, mentally traversing the space she is trying to convey all the heatedness of her blood to her listener, they suddenly become one in their thoughts, understandable to each other, but it lasts only a moment, and the fact that Rudolph did not allow himself to overstep, to prolong this unity, to repeat himself, makes his movie unique, and his view of the disconnection between people living under the same roof, but finding understanding through the deaf wall of space - alive and true. As I like to say, “Pick Me” is from that series of movies that look fresh years later.

Like a true melodrama, “Pick Me” is filled with talk of love, but, most surprisingly, that feeling seems to be stripped away from everyone. Rudolph does not explore the theme of fate and chance, love, or better, human relationships, is presented as a product in a supermarket, or a new service industry, where every man is a potential husband and vice versa, and the factor of choice is not the heart and instincts, but the opinion of others. As Barbara Stanwyck's character in Douglas Serck's masterpiece said, “You can't marry for loneliness.” It seems that this loneliness between people is only getting worse with the development of media. Rudolph quotes “The Graduate.” On screen, the confused bride, already trying on the mask of a prosperous family life in public, brings out the panic in my head - did I make the right choice? Great movie.