Heartbreakers

Bobby Roth's semi-autobiographical drama is so uniquely mid-'80s it almost smells like Drakkar Noir. It's a friendship drama about two thirtysomething guys trying to get in touch with their feelings that features neon-lit bars that blast Pat Benatar, slick loft apartments where artists work on giant canvases, kissing a total stranger on the mouth in the middle of the street to signify that a guy is having a good day, men playing racquetball, women teaching aerobics classes, men and women eating huge sloppy cheeseburgers on first dates, tight jeans, and skinny ties. More importantly, it's shot by the peerless German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, scored by the iconic German synth-pop band Tangerine Dream, and stars the great New York actor Peter Coyote—all three of these last factors make any '80s movie worth seeing in my book.

Coyote plays one of the internally emotional, cooly arrogant, sexy in a lizard-like way, misogynist artists he always embodies as effortlessly as if he were narrating an antihistamine commercial. Arthur Blue is a frustrated painter who can't sell his work and who gets dumped by his longtime girlfriend (Kathryn Harrold) for a more commercial artist, played by Barney Miller's Max Gail (an unusual casting choice that works brilliantly). Blue's best pal Eli, played by future Stingray star Nick Mancuso, is desperate to fall in love with a woman who wants more than empty one-night stands and is interesting enough to make him want more too. The dynamics of these two aggressively heterosexual guys who don't know how to talk eloquently about their emotions are explored in unexpected ways that include their various involvements with the busty model Blue hires for a series of Betty Page-inspired paintings (Carol Wayne) and the mysterious and stand-offish French manager of the art gallery that offers Blue a show (Carole Laure).

Not everything in the film works, but that feels appropriate for a story about people whose methods of connecting with those they care about are limited and often destructive. Roth perfectly encapsulates the details of a very specific milieu—the shallow, low-end of the LA art scene in the mid-'80s. But he also captures the timeless stage of life we all reach in which we fight against the need to take stock of our careers, relationships, plans, and dreams and start to realize that the life we've been living for the past five or so years probably is our life and not just the way we've been passing the time while we figure out what we're really going to do in the world.