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Smooth Talk

1985

Joyce Chopra

Laura Dern, Treat Williams, Mary Kay Place, Margaret Welsh ...

5.9

229

Drama. Romance. Thriller Based on the short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been", by Joyce Carol Oates, this film chronicles a 15-year-old girl, Connie's, sexual awakening in the Northern California suburbs. Her experimentations begin to get out of hand when the mysterious Arnold Friend takes an interest in her.

	Author	Review
United States	Rita Kempley The Washington Post	"A deft dramatization of a Joyce Carol Oates story (...) [Laura Dern is] as sure in the role as a teen Meryl Streep. It's a performance of quiet depth and intensity that augurs a brilliant career for the young Dern"	POS
United States	Vincent Canby The New York Times	"[It] is as spare and lean as the source material (...) The director and the writer demonstrate a kind of discipline very rare in movies, especially a debut work"	POS
United States	Sheila Benson Los Angeles Times	"The shiveringly memorable 'Smooth Talk' (...) may be the first film to get adolescence in America right, down to the last, delicate seismographic tremor"	POS
United States	Dave Kehr Chicago Reader	"[It] plays uncomfortably like two movies jammed into one (...) Both films have their modest qualities; it's just that Chopra hasn't found an intelligible transition between the two very different approaches"	NEU
United States	Jake Cole Slant	"Joyce Chopra patiently and shrewdly observes the contradictions of human behavior that Laura Dern brilliantly conveys (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"	POS

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