I am a fan of director Alan Rudolph, the Robert Altman protege who carved out his own singular style with several noir-ish romances, my all time favourite being Choose Me. I always love how Rudolph will pick a singer as the ‘voice’ of his movie – such as Teddy Pendergrass for Choose Me, or Tom Waits for Afterglow. In his hard-to-find take on the Women’s Melodrama, Remember My Name (1978), he uses jazz and blues singer Alberta Hunter who contributes several songs including the title track and sets the tone for the movie’s unique, oddball main character, Emily (Geraldine Chaplin). Driving out of a mountainous fog into California, Emily sets her sights on a person of interest, a construction worker (Anthony Perkins), following him from a distance and stalking his relationship with his wife, Barbara (Berry Berenson, Perkins’ actual wife at the time), even making anonymous phone-calls to their suburban home. The movie keeps things mysterious and draws you through intrigue into its characters. Even when the reasons for Emily’s obsession are revealed, they are only obliquely divulged, keeping some things still unknown. Geraldine Chaplin is so good in the lead performance, investing the character with a sense of self-possession and careful deliberation in actions, gesture, and utterences. She remains off-kilter and indeterminate in her interactions and the way she takes up space, as she moves into a flop-house with a stern yet giving security guard (Moses Gunn) and finds work as a cashier in a thrift-store (run by a young Jeff Goldblum). Perkins as well is a suitable match in that you get a better read on his dubious qualities, yet he remains in between villain and victim, a sense of ordinariness on the surface, papering over pain and regrets caused to others. I really got into Remember My Name, how it keeps the characters spinning like plates and even if the concluding actions didn’t quite convince me as potential revenge, it remains aloof and strange in its resolution. While not as neon bar noirish as Choose Me or Trouble In Mind, it does luxuriate in a late-1970s vibe of bars and hotel rooms and back rooms. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 