Fool for Love Reviews

You’d think the cinematic marriage of two rascally talents like playwright Sam Shepard and director Robert Altman would be a happy occasion, but Fool for Love is only halfway there. Altman gets great work from his leading lady, and surrounds the two leads with an impressively eccentric supporting cast, but the material never coheres.

A drifting cowboy (Sam Shepard) pulls into a sleepy hamlet, encounters a long-lost love (Kim Basinger), and proceeds to try and force her back home with him. It’s an interesting set-up and Altman tries to inject much needed energy as the story slowly reveals an incestuous plot twist, but it’s to no true avail. Basinger appears to be the only actor acutely aware of the Southern Gothic soap opera that she’s performing, while Shepard, despite being the author of the piece, never gets a firm grasp on his character. My best guess is that he and Altman had disagreements about how to tackle the material, and the result is the muddled Fool for Love with Shepard trying to bring gravity to the proceedings while Altman and Basinger are playing it as deep-fried sex farce, like a screwball goof on Faulkner. It’s entertaining for being so unsettled and deeply strange in tonality.