Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

A small town in Texas, 1975. The women who once founded a James Dean fan club meet in an old store on the twentieth anniversary of the actor's death. The place is the same, the people are not. Mona has been here for years and tells them she was an extra in one of Dean's films and that her son is his. Sissy jokes and boasts about her body. Then a woman nobody knows walks in: Joanne. As the talk goes on, none of the stories told twenty years ago stays as it was. Robert Altman directs. Sandy Dennis, Cher, Karen Black, Sudie Bond, Marta Heflin, Mark Patton and Kathy Bates are in the cast; all of them had played the same parts in the Broadway production Altman directed the same year. It is an American production. The film cost eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars and was shot on sixteen millimetre and transferred to thirty five. The whole film takes place in one location, inside an old store in the town. Past and present are built as the two sides of the store's large mirror; 1955 on one side and 1975 on the other. The film won the top prize at the 1982 Chicago Film Festival. The matter it treats is the story people tell themselves; everyone has a version and none of them holds. Cher is in a serious role here and it was counted a turning point in her acting career. The narrative does not hide its stage origin; the dialogue is dense and the camera turns around the actors. The ending saves nobody. Its limit is form; one location, a great deal of talk, and a theatre pace. Who it is for: viewers who like Altman and films built around actors. Who it is not for: it is closed in, talky, and the ending bitter.