Smooth Talk

1985 film by Joyce Chopra
the album by Evelyn King

Smooth Talk is a 1985 film directed by Joyce Chopra, loosely based on Joyce Carol Oates' short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (1966),

Connie Wyatt is a restless 15 year old who is anxious to explore the pleasures of her sexual awakening. Before she enters her sophomore year in high school, she spends the summer moping around her family farmhouse. She suffers from the put downs of her mother, Katherine, while hearing nothing but praise for her older sister, June. Her father, Harry, somehow manages to float around the family tensions. Connie also helps paint the cottage, just as her mother constantly demands her to. Connie passes the time cruising the local shopping mall with her friends and flirting with boys. However, when an actual date leads to heavy petting, she escapes from the boy's car. She frequents a hamburger joint popular with locals, where unbeknownst to her, an older man observes her with interest. One night as she leaves, the man playfully tells Connie, "I'm watching you!" Connie and her mother get into an argument about her going out at night and being careful with whom she flirts, which results in Katherine slapping Connie when she brings up how Katherine became a young mother. Connie declines to attend a barbecue with her family that afternoon and is left alone in the house. Later, the same man who was watching Connie approaches the house in a 1960s convertible. The side of his car is painted with the name "Arnold Friend" which he claims is his real name. Besides dressing and behaving like James Dean, he also name drops several teenybopper acts, even though he appears to be in his thirties. Although he initially comes off as kind and friendly, he gradually adopts a sinister demeanor, alternating between speaking to Connie in a warm, seductive voice and shouting insults to his fellow car passenger when he inquires about a phone. Arnold informs Connie about how he has been watching her and that he knows all about her, recounting the details about her family's barbecue plans with startling accuracy. He then begins speaking about how he could be her lover. Connie orders him to leave, but he coerces her into going on a drive with him by threatening to burn down the house. His friend stays behind as they head off in his car. When Connie returns home, she is bewildered and disheveled and informs Arnold that she never wants to see him again. It is left ambiguous whether or not he raped her; it is implied that she isn't the same person she was at the film's beginning. When Connie's family returns from the barbecue, her mother tearfully apologizes to her for slapping her earlier that day, but Connie reassures her that everything is all right. At the film's ending, she doesn't inform June about what happened, but dances with her to James Taylor's recording of the song "Handy Man".

The short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates was adapted by playwright Tom Cole, Joyce Chopra's husband. Among the contributions Cole and Chopra added to the story was a fleshing out of the family relationships between Connie, her parents, and her sister. Laura Dern was not cast until two weeks before filming. It screened at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize. The film was given a limited release in American theaters and continued to be unreleased on VHS and DVD for years thereafter due to going through different distributors. On Rotten Tomatoes, Smooth Talk holds a rating of 94% from 31 reviews. The consensus summarizes: "Elevated by Laura Dern's haunting performance, Smooth Talk is far more than your average coming of age drama." Roger Ebert, who awarded the film 3.5 stars out of 4, described it as "almost uncanny in its self assurance".

The film was given a 4K restoration by The Criterion Collection in September 2020 and was screened at the New York Film Festival that month to critical acclaim. Janus Films gave the film a general re release that November. Marshall Shaffer of Slant Magazine wrote "the film adequately recognizes the thin line between male seduction and coercion."

The film was released on DVD by MGM Home Entertainment on December 7, 2004. The film was released on Blu ray for the first time by Olive Films on November 24, 2015. The Criterion Collection released a special edition Blu ray & DVD of the film on February 23, 2021. The edition is a two disc set which includes Chopra’s short films, retrospective interviews with the director and cast, and behind the scenes featurettes.