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Making Mr Right
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If ever there was an unjustly overlooked, underrated film of the 1980s, this is it. Susan Seidelman scored a huge success with her first commercial assignment, Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), on the heels of her independent feature debut Smithereens (1982). Yet an army of (mainly male) film critics was suspiciously quick to trash her subsequent work, including Cookie and She-Devil (both released 1989) – just as they trashed other fascinating mainstream experiments by women, such as Barbra Streisand’s Yentl (1983) and Mary Lambert’s Siesta (1987). Public relations woman extraordinaire Frankie (played by New York underground star Ann Magnuson) is brought in to sell the newly developed android Ulysses to the public – and, in particular, to women. Frankie discovers, to her amazement, that Ulysses’ inventor, Dr Peters, has narcissistically fashioned the android in his own image. John Malkovich plays both parts brilliantly. It’s easy to see why this movie troubles some viewers. Its feminist critique of the predominantly male domain of science is succinct and devastating. Seidelman portrays so-called ‘rational man’ as emotionally inept, spiritually barren and boundlessly conceited. In a manner that is both shocking and liberating, Making Mr Right goes on to wonder whether a new, artificial man, made to the strict specification of women’s needs and desires, might not be the required replacement for the Real Thing. British critic Judith Williamson summed up well the film’s subversive quality in her New Statesman review: “Forget postmodern: this is post men” (reprinted in her 1993 collection Deadline at Dawn: Film Criticism 1980-1990, Marion Boyars, pp. 144-146). It should be enforced viewing for all computer nerds – especially of the male variety. MORE: “Shady Ladies of the Eighties” © Adrian Martin 1 July 1990 |
