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Memorable, crazy movie

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It's winter. It's cold. Everything seems worse then. And, when you're lonely, miserable and pining for a lost love, that's the worst. We see John Heard get into a car and suddenly Mary Beth Hurt speaks to him from the back seat. But then we see the conversation is in his mind. He still thinks about her. He still needs her, even though she's with someone else. The bittersweet mood is set and we are in for a ride that is both hysterical and somber. It's the kind of laughter that makes us cry. John Heard gives a very understated performance and Gloria Grahame is good as his very kooky mother. And, despite all the fun and love shared between John and Mary Beth in flashback, we see the reality that John refuses to see. He still sits in his car outside her place. He's lost, but finally has to come to terms with survival before he goes crazy. He goes for a candy bar in the lobby of the office-building he works in throughout the film and can never decide what he wants and can't speak up to the blind guy behind the counter, until he finally has a breakdown. This 1979 sleeper really entertains without basking too much in the dumps. Sure it seems depressing, but you never feel down. There's always hope with John Heard's charming personality, Peter Reigert's performance as his friend, and the true-to-life treatment and love for the subject matter by the director Joan Micklin Silver. A tour de force by all concerned and a must-see for all those searching for love.

This movie is a nice lil' gem, and notable for future lumanaries such as Animal House's Peter Reigert, Griffin Dunne (treemendous in After Hours) and John Heard (late of the Sopranos). But, the real steal in the film is Ms. Violet Bick herself, Jimmy Stewart's guilty pleasure in It's a Wonderful Life: Gloria Grahame.

I have always loved this film, ever since I first saw it in its re-release as "CSOW" in 1982. I have never seen the "Head Over Heels" version, thankfully. What really hit me then was the parallel to an obsessive love affair I had just experienced. I was dumped by a woman I met at work, and it was several months before I got over it. I had an unfulfilling, drab office job, and an unemployed roommate sharing a house with me.As a film, what makes this so special is its lack of pretense. The characters are as flawed as they are lovable. The relationship between Charles and his mother is as unsettling as it is comical. Even though Charles is a self-obsessed jerk, his simple devotion to the one wonderful, transcendent thing in his life - the love he and Laura shared - is endearing. He is not so much a stalker as someone who simply cannot bear the thought of returning to the uneventful, empty life he knew before Laura.

The pivot on which this story turns is Laura's character; unfortunately, that character is drawn less thoroughly than one might wish. How are we to understand her vacillations? (We have to guess, because the picture doesn't explain them, and she herself is apparently unable to explain them.) Saying that she is confused by her choices tells us nothing worthwhile about her character. Does she - out of a sense of guilt - feel compelled to draw away whenever her lover draws nearer? An interesting enough concept, but it isn't brought out in the film, so such an interpretation is no more than speculation. If Laura's attachment to her daughter is so strong, how was she able to walk away? (There is, by the way, little in the film itself to suggest that the two were especially close.) As for the men in her life: her husband seems no better or worse than average, and her lover - except for his persistence - also seems unremarkable. As for the ending: the one in the version I saw (running, running, running faster in the park) is no ending at all. It just happens to be the last scene of the picture.