Star 80

An American film based on a real case. Paul is after small opportunities. He works in a car park, has business cards printed, and is always looking for a break. He sees Dorothy at a hamburger stand. She is eighteen, still at school, and has been noticed by nobody. Paul has photographs taken of her. He sends them to a magazine and the magazine is interested. Dorothy goes to Los Angeles. She becomes a cover, film offers come, and she is known within a short time. Paul is beside her. He marries her, says he is her manager, and comes everywhere. But nobody wants him. He is found coarse, clinging and harmful; the doors close one by one. From there the film is a story of collapse. A divorce petition, a detective, a rented house and a night. The narrative gives away the ending at the start. The film opens with the death and works back to how it was reached. What the narrative is interested in is not fame but ownership: Paul sees the girl as an investment and cannot accept losing her. Eric Roberts does not soften the character at all. In some scenes the man is pitiable, in others unbearable, and the film does not try to make him comprehensible. The form is uncomfortable. The narrative includes passages in which Paul speaks to camera, seating the audience beside him. This was Bob Fosse's last film. It was received with difficulty on release and, because of the harshness of its subject, never reached a wide audience. Mariel Hemingway, Eric Roberts, Cliff Robertson and Carroll Baker are in the cast. Bob Fosse wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes hard American drama with no distance. Who it is not for: nearly everyone; the ending is plainly unbearable and the film offers no consolation.