Screen

...The corps de ballet is what the company wisely chose to feature on its first North American tour in twenty-two years...

...After a dinner with until I got closer and heard friends, Streep soliloquizes on the burden of trusting in marringing from around the country...

...her room...

...our alphabet will know us the way Neither in the film nor in the book is there any attempt to teachers did when we sat explore these questions...

...At this point, star vehicle overwhelms story...

...Hers initial casualness, loving him too much...

...They both manage to is a hard, tough attack, one which takes a role by storm rather project genuine amorous "chemistry," a rare commodity in than winning it with a more subtle approach...

...changes in other leading dancers so that mechanical brilliance Moore, in particular, displays good timing and delivery...

...summit meeting between the U.S...

...DON McDONAGH streets when he realizes he's made a mistake rejecting love...

...I have become my ballet provided an undercurrent of security to the thin ranks of mother...

...The closer the lovers get, the more their friends attempt textbook clarity...

...More annoying is the film's longwindedness (it's easily developed gesture, but the Kirov will survive them as it has half an hour too long), obligatory rock music, predictable fight survived forced transfers, defections, suicide, and Moscow's on New Year's Eve, and silly scenes of Lowe roaming rainy envy...

...Perhaps the problem lies in the autobiographical narrative at two points where romances often bog down: sex particularity of the story itself or the author's success in creatand (far more traumatic these days) moving in...

...It is another Big Name Release that brained, and a fine supporting actor, Steven Hill, is given disappoints...

...Screen Withal, the Kirov is still a major company because of its sound school curriculum and traditions...

...A 15 August 1986: 435 better film would have explored problems of complementar- Ephron can write comedy, and Nicholson and Streep can act ity, not just commitment...

...casting the Big Star...

...able on such short notice...

...Richard Masur, Jeff Daniels, Milos Forman) appear initially But About Last Night is not - as Chicago critics Siskel and only as an undifferentiated mass of friends...

...Streep provides some zing, especially in a supermarket when, wheeling child about, she spreads mean rumors about her husband's mistress...

...They even fight favored position in the company, this approach has effected well, rarer yet when most screen blow-ups seem contrived...

...riage, all the while eyeing a Key lime pie...

...Okay, but this thin characterization is not as noticeable in Dial tone is working but not prose as in film, where Nicholson, after early displays of his your voice...

...When her boss, an ex-lover, pressures her for sex and claims Lyubov Kunakova danced the Odette/Odile of "Swan that they once had something (in the vernacular) "kinda speLake" with a similar steely determination partnered by a less cial," she corrects him with, "and kinda sleazy and kinda than top rank Siegfried, Evgeny Neff...

...Mamet's play Sexual Perversity in Chicago...

...When we last see him, I call you...

...They film terrible segments in New York novel about her marriage to and divorce from Watergate when Streep first takes flight: she is made to run about scatterjournalist Carl Bernstein...

...Nichols and Ephron use the crutch of a political dinner to show how Streep suffers HEARTBURN IS based on Nora Ephron's slimly disguised in Washington...

...The ensemble Belushi, and Moore's man-hating roommate, Elizabeth Perfeeling was strong, placement secure, and positions taken with kins...

...The change makes possible one of the more convincing The impressions one derived varied from place to place, recent film romances...

...played by Meryl Streep, is not well identified as a food colum- Whoever laughs at this scene has fallen into the trap of thinking nist and not even endowed with any real show of wit until it must be funny because The Great Rascal, Jack Nicholson, is midway through the film...

...Going back to the box rascally energy, is reduced to a cipher...

...It's good, "kinda...

...they were rubbers no one claimed The end also achieves some power...

...reassuring...

...The hastily arranged tour included Los outline of his story about young singles on the prowl...

...tragic self-inflicted death of Yuri Soloviev during this period further depleted the ranks of the principal dancers...

...It's the best use of Can't disconnect voices telling food and best moment in Heartburn, the only time it resonates of vacation plans changed to flat with wide significance and attains balanced focus...

...However, in both the over...

...Discovering American Express slips crooning...

...But again tires, of arthritis continuous as Nichols shoots the scene statically: just at the moment we want wires on poles, of stores spread to see Streep's effect in the eyes of the other diners, the camera with jellies of children...

...In Philadelphia where I saw the company, The leads are played by Rob Lowe and Demi (rhymes with Galina Mezentseva danced the lead in "The Shades" act of "the-me" generation) Moore, whose previous roles have "La Bayadere...

...No box could hold the silence...

...the corps de ballet in the opening moments of "The Shades" The screenplay, moreover, retains Mamet's tart view of two act, with their endlessly repeated attitude-renverse sequence, "friends" figures, Lowe's macho drinking pal, played by Jim _was a demonstration of the school at its best...

...The two programs given in the United States consisted of the full-length "Swan Lake" and exerpts from "La Bayadere," ABOUT LAST NIGHT is a love story, loosely based on David "Paquita," and Fokine's moodily romantic "Les Sylphides...

...Indeed, comedy was her theatrical trademark...

...Since she has a some big-name romances in recent films...

...It would have been wiser to keep the husband's role small to begin with, or to choose a lesser name to fill it...

...Now I the initial courtship dovetails at this point with the mistake of know why these phones aren't rubbers...

...roles in Philadelphia...

...It is spectacular, but quietly so, and also to sabotage them and preserve less complicated friendships...

...Once she's allowed to be mischievous, established as a comic presence...

...Midway, help finally comes from the Sister Mary Lucina supports, mostly Channing detailing her means of avenging Calling You infidelity, and Catherine O'Hara, who steals all her scenes as a smarmy, gossipy TV journalist...

...The mistake offilming like curtains in a breeze...

...That's not Hollywood...

...Like courtship, rather than the book's more dramatic opening in the suggestiveness of old-fashioned Hollywood romances, medias res, after their marriage and first child...

...TOM O'BRIEN Commonweal: 436...

...Your words fluff my rooms . he's left, literally, with nothing to do...

...A fuss The company had originally agreed to appear only in Van- was made about the change in title, with some ascribing couver as part of Canada's International Exposition...

...Editing saves went wrong...

...Most scenes which left the bedroom to the imagination, the editing excites early in the film are static, even a key episode where Streep, us to want to learn more about the lovers, not simply see more suddenly seized with distrust, delays the wedding by hiding in of them...

...when Streep undercomplains, "You couldn't even use cash, like a normal goes a Caesarian, something about the risks involved in marphilanderer...

...They may be enthralled by the vertigin- Some viewers might be offended by the film's unstinting ous look of ice-skating-styled turns and snapped-out arm use of four-letter words and Belushi's male-locker-room view gestures of insect quickness at the expense of organically of sex...

...Instead of ing a "mensch" voice in prose that perfectly balances comedy extended love scenes, the film cuts between a few suggestive and anger...

...The husband is simply The Enemy...

...There are several awful early scenes...

...Though no dancers and choreographers of COURTSHIP CASUALTIES their level are currently visible, the body of the company is 'LAST NIGHT' & 'HEARTBURN' strong...

...The it to the studio's fear about placing ads and gathering publicity...

...John Wood also amuses with They took ten phones out, piled a brilliant imitation of Alistair Cooke when Streep fantasizes them in a box in the hall...

...Trenton was given a single matinee nise DeClue and Tom Kazurinsky) and director's (Ed Zwick) which was meager, but more than major cities like New York healthy dissent from the predictable pessimism that is by now a and Chicago, which didn't have a suitably-sized theater avail- literary convention...

...Someone, either Ephron or Director Mike Nichols, erotic shots and domestic snippets of Moore making the bed or also erred by opening the film with Streep and Nicholson's Lowe running out half-naked to grab the morning paper...

...Why can't some The new phones after teaming husbands with lovely wives and good marriages be faithful...

...Perkins has the newcomers in the company, but none was seen in featured harder, killjoy role, but wins more sympathy...

...of featured artists...

...There were Last Night substitutes a happy ending, which one can either no sustained seasons possible elsewhere because of the late- attribute to Hollywood convention or the screenwriters' (Deness in booking the tour...

...Like Debra Winger, Moore complements a husky the principals...

...her book's naughty zest and acute notations on how large a role They gamble badly when Nicholson sings some baby songs food plays in courtship and cohabitation...

...Ephron wrote the screenplay, but omits much of some abruptly sloppy characterization as her madcap father...

...is now prized more than the glow of softer phrasing...

...The essential Kirov is still intact no matter what the Like his late brother, Belushi can play a vulgarian with both a idiosyncracies of the principals...

...About Angeles, Washington, Philadelphia, and Trenton...

...Indeed, her heroine, with an exaggerated basso after he learns Streep is pregnant...

...She is currently the leading dancer of the merely exploited their fashionable looks...

...and USSR produced a In truth, the new title fits a new creation, which borrows climate in which the Kirov's visit could be expanded to include Mamet's characters, his keen ear for spoken English, and the the United States...

...The conflict of commitment and sexual depending on what the Kirov directors chose to present by way freedom is explored, if not profoundly, at least intelligently...

...In About Last Night, company by virtue of the numbers of performances and lead- Lowe plays a young businessman reluctant to commit himself ing roles she is assigned, but her style is jarringly at odds with to Moore, an advertising assistant who finds herself, despite the lyrical "singing" line one associates with the Kirov...

...Ebert claim - the best picture of the year...

...The fine supporting cast (Stockard Channing, Also refreshing was the use of some local Chicago color...

...refrains from a pan, focusing just once or twice on Nicholson...

...What makes a man like Nicholson tick...

...used for assignations by her husband, Jack Nicholson, she Childbirth, however, saves Heartburn...

...in the rows of their foreheads...

...So what Still, About Last Night has certain strengths...

...But the line falls flat, because she hasn't been riage gets through...

...It was the school that produced Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Michael Fokine, and George Balanchine...

...There are promising young disgusting and funny comic extravagance...

...The entrance of the twenty-eight members of voice and sultry all-American looks with (kinda) brains...

...Later, reflecting on a Thanksgiving dinner she cooks to -mixed bill and the full-length "Swan Lake," the corps de please Lowe, she laments, "It's official...

...Thought her marital woes on Masterpiece Theater...