A wacky and exuberant, urban, 80s version of A Midsummer’s Night Dream in which the public spaces of the Times Square Port Authority bus terminal and the Staten Island ferry park are set against the suburban landscape of sexual repression, where a philandering, disingenuous, money grubbing and utterly uncool husband gets left behind for the intrigue, magic and hayhem on the other side of the George Washington Bridge. Indicting the petty bourgeois superficiality (Fort Lee, NJ), Madonna, the night club, dance music celebrating sexual liberation from dancing alone by hooking up
The Port Authority Bus Terminal lockers represent a location of public use, a kind of social and public service for storage which enables the sort of easy transformations of clothing and location that Times Square used to embody. In Desperately Seeking Susan, the Port Authority lockers plays a key role in the narrative of the film, whereby one person's belongings can be swiped by another. The swapping or mixup which precipitates the meeting of the two heroines represents the method or tactic of cross-class contact, along with the newspaper personals ad, which is the film's inciting incident.
On a personal note:
Having grown up in the town next door to Fort Lee, NJ, this film holds a special place in my heart. The portrayal of that particular brand of (Jewish) middle class, suburban, superficial materialism and provinciality of Roberta’s world juxtaposed to the sexy, mysterious, down and out and slightly dangerous city world that Susan inhabited perfectly captured my own perceptions of these two worlds: my Bergen County, NJ high school life and the New York City that I only glimpsed occasionally when I would go clubbing at the Peppermint Lounge or buy used clothes down on Broadway at Unique Clothing (where the NYU bookstore is now located.) Back in 1985, New York City felt dirty and scary and dangerous, fully of mystery and anonymity, and I wanted to be vulnerable to everything I imagined it had to offer. This picture of Madonna and Rosanna Arquette hung on my wall for many years after I first saw the film, a symbol of the sisterhood ethic which the film ultimately celebrates above all romantic and heterosexual encounters. You really have to watch the Director's Cut of the film's ending to understand the real feminist meaning of the film, whereas the commercially released ending cuts that meaning short.
One of the remarkable things about this film is the way that Madonna's career as an underground musician and pop-punk aesthetic and personality were so lovingly rendered here on film. Madonna was not the big star she was soon to become when Seidelman cast her in the film. The director is quoted as saying that she wanted to cast someone who embodied the world of downtown New York and brought their own unique sense of style to the film. This was Madonna's first feature film and I would argue her best, most heartfelt and emotionally believable performance that she's ever given. -S.T.
