This paper compares and contrasts two films featuring a heroine trying to break away from a repressive family and societal expectations, Richard BrooksÆ 1977 adaptation of Judith RossnerÆs novel, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and Vasily PichulÆs 1988 Russian drama, Little Vera. These two films provide quite different cultural backgrounds for a similar human struggle. Both portray young women trying to find their own identities and rebelling against authority. Both present a daunting and fairly bleak life, one ending in tragedy, one slightly more hopeful. The two films have some intriguing though superficial parallels. They also share other coincidences that turn out, on further examination, to illuminate the deeper themes that both explore, including the impulse to try to escape from the angst of young adulthood by overindulging in drugs and alcohol. They use some similar artistic images and techniques to explore their common themes. Together, these two films paint a complex and fascinating portrait of the young adultÆs contemporary struggle, and particularly the young adult femaleÆs struggle, for identity and separation.
Looking for Mr. Goodbar was released by Paramount in 1977, and it presents a bleak picture of a contemporary woman dealing with womenÆs liberation, family tensions, drugs, sex, and personal freedom. Richard Brooks writes and directs, using Judith RossnerÆs novel as his original source. The story focuses on Theresa Dunn (Diane Keaton) who, at the start of the film, is in her final semester of college, studying to be a teacher of deaf students.
A repressed Catholic girl who still lives at home with her parents, Theresa has an active fantasy life, beginning with her imaginings about her English professor. Working as his assistant, she imagines the torrid affair they are having after class, and she eventually turns this fantasy into a reality. Her married lover turns out to be a callous user, however,...