Cutter's Way (1981)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Cutter's Way (1981) -- I. Passer

Jeff Bridges plays Richard Bone who is drifting through life, as a part-time gigolo and boat salesman, whereas his friend, Alex Cutter, a Vietnam vet who has lost an arm, a leg, and an eye (played sharply by John Heard), is passionately and pointedly committed to a singularly bitter viewpoint (that the rich and powerful will screw over everyone).  Cutter is an exceptional character (almost doing an alcoholic and manic early Tom Waits impression) -- as memorable as any to appear in any film -- but ultimately the movie may be more about Bone's ability or inability to make a real decision.  A conspiracy theory plot remains resolutely out-of-focus as a kind of lingering hangover from 1970s films, but this is almost purely about characters and not about how they get from point A to Z.

Claire's Knee (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

Claire's Knee (1970) -- E. Rohmer

Perhaps only the French would concoct a movie about a summer place (around a lake) where a 35-to-40 year old man about to get married discusses the possibilities and implications of an affair with a teenage girl.  Perhaps only Eric Rohmer would make such a movie.  The film itself is chaste but evocative.  Jerome stumbles into the plot because he runs into his friend, Aurora, a writer, who is lodging with a single mother of two teen girls (from different fathers, although it matters not).  She wants to experiment with an idea for a novel (about an older man and a teenage girl).  The acting of the principals captures the right blend of awkwardness, especially for Jerome who is very out-of-place at times in the young person's world.  Of course, in a somewhat Bunuellian (or Nabokovian) fashion, the film becomes focused on Claire's knee as an object of desire.  What would be the various meanings or effects of a gentle touch of that knee? A film that unwinds through talk that seems natural enough, though literary in scope, and which pulls you in through the ordinary suspense created when we wonder what people will do when they have moral choices to make.