Kathleen Turner peers into the infinite

Kathleen Turner peers into the infinite -- click text to watch scene

Andrew Sarris

“….One esteemed colleague took a poke at Kathleen Turner's performance by expressing a preference for Debra Winger, the original choice for the part…. Winger would undoubtedly have been broader and funnier than Turner, but not nearly as subtly sympathetic and realistic. There are still some problems with the script and some of the casting, but Turner's full-bodied and spirited portrayal of a woman whose mature wisdom cannot overcome her destiny remains for [me] the performance of the year. The caressing glow Coppola casts on her hair is just an extra dividend.” 

-- Andrew Sarris, Village Voice, October 21, 1986 

In a column about the Academy Awards, Sarris asked something like, "[When's the last time they gave someone an Oscar for acting with rather than at her colleagues]" and the bitterness in his comments about Spacek, with Kael's help, winning the New York Film Critics best actress award.

To this point in her career, Sarris hadn't thought much of Winger, but he would later retroactively revise it, asking how could he have missed her qualities?

(originally quoted on this blog in 2005)

David Denby

“In Kathleen Turner, Coppola has got an actress who can make the smallest, most vagrant desire or hesitation dramatic. In the opening scenes, set in 1985, Peggy Sue Kelcher goes to a party--the twenty-fifth reunion of her high-school class--and Turner, breathing deeply, mouth dropping in panic, seems a little overwrought. But her distress makes sense soon enough…. [W]hat really bothers her is that the worthless husband she has loved since senior year has left her…. 

 “Coppola mixes romance and satire, and he heightens everything just enough so that her ambiguous reactions (girlish ardor and adult disillusion) have equal emotional weight. He stays so close to Peggy Sue that the whole movie seems to be her superheated dream, and Kathleen Turner achieves the amazing feat of playing 18 and 43 at the same time. When Peggy Sue argues with herself over her hopeless husband-to-be (should she marry him all over again?), what she feels and what she knows fight so hard for predominance that she's nearly torn apart by the struggle....” 

-- David Denby, New York, October 20, 1986

(originally quoted on this blog in 2005)

"I think I'll go to school today!" -- click this link to watch scene

"Coppola has got an actress who can make the smallest, most vagrant desire or hesitation dramatic..." David Denby