Square Dance

We rewatched Square Dance, which is only the second of 51 items currently on Our Noni's filmography. Released in 1987, just a year after her debut in Lucas, this film is where she really began to earn her chops as an actress. This status is revealed in the opening credits, where she is given third billing, even though she is the film's central character. Top billing would be another year away, in 1988's Heathers.

As former Texans, one thing we appreciated about the film was the variety of subtle ways in which its Texas setting was signified. In some ways, it could have taken place any where in the South, but chicken-fried steak, ordinary men with extraordinary hats, and other clues put the rural scenes deep -- as they say -- in the heart of Texas. The urban scenes were in Fort Worth, where subtlety is not required.

Just as she begins to come of age as an actress, this is a particular kind of coming-of-age film. There is a complicated love interest in the person of Rob Lowe, and there is something about her hair and glasses. But the real growing up takes place in the ways Gemma understands the adults in her life.

We have been doing some writing about the Bechdel Test lately -- the rather low threshold for a pro-female film being two named, female characters having a conversation that is not about a man. This film fails by that measure, but the dysfunction of Juanelle's "romances" seems to be precisely the point of the film, and her daughter seems to learn from the abundant negative examples.

A subplot of this film revolves around the complicated, transgressive relationships both young Gemma and her grandfather have with a local black man, Beecham, which put me very much in mind of the Ballad of Curtis Loew, which I found myself humming throughout the film.

Final verdict:
Three croquet balls