Stardust Memories (1980)

Starring: Woody Allen, Charlotte Rampling, Jessica Harper, Marie-Christine Barrault, Tony Roberts, and Laraine Newman with cameos from Daniel Stern, Brent Spiner, and Sharon Stone
Grade: B+

Funny, interesting, and even profound in certain themes and artistic choices, Stardust Memories is a comedy-drama that is both confusing and beautiful.

Summary

To open, we find a man sitting on a train with a bunch of silent depressed people. The man stares across at the other train and sees a beautiful woman (Stone) in a train parallel to his. Once she kisses the window after making eye contact with him, he complains to the conductor that he’s on the wrong train. Now in a panic, he tries to get the train to stop, but everyone sits there and stares with disgruntled looks on their faces. We then cut to the man with his train group at a garbage dump. Across from him is the woman with her train group. Once he sees her from a distance, the film ends. It turns out this was the new film from world-famous filmmaker and actor Sandy Bates (Allen). His newest movie was just screened for some executives, and they hate it. Bates is known for comedies, but lately, he’s dipped into dramatic/surrealist territory to mixed results. Thankfully, the paranoid Bates wasn’t present for the screening because they roast him too. One executive points out how he’s using the film to showcase his personal suffering to pass it off as art (Newman). Another says he should be happy with just being funny because it’s his greatest gift.

In his car, Bates is stuck in traffic and speaks to his secretary about meetings she forgot to cancel. This continues once he gets home as he has to talk to all of his private advisors and employees about certain dates/meetings he has to make. At the same time, Bates asks if Isobel (Barrault) called. They all bypass this question and discuss the importance of Bates going to this special weekend-long film festival centered around his movies. Bates doesn’t want to go, but they explain he can’t back out because they sold all of the tickets already. One advisor wants to talk about his new film, but Bates insists the studio can’t make him go back to comedy because he doesn’t feel funny anymore. He can’t make more comedies because all he sees now is human suffering. He goes on and on about his worries in life, so everyone leaves. Before they do, they reiterate the idea of going to the film festival, especially because it’s by a seashore and it might be nice. After everyone goes, Bates daydreams about his ex-girlfriend Dorrie (Rampling). Unfortunately, he has to shake out of it because he has to stop a fire his maid started.

Bates gets into town for his film festival and stays at the Stardust hotel. He’s bombarded by fans as soon as he gets out of his car. He goes to his hotel room and calls up Isobel to try and get her to come out to see him. After the first night of the festival and a Q&A session where he delights the crowd with his amusing answers, Bates sees the beautifully mysterious Daisy (Harper). For a second after, Dorrie pops into his head. Daisy’s boyfriend Jack (John Rothman) approaches Bates to potentially be a guest lecturer for his screenwriting class, but he turns him down. He does agree to have a drink with him though, especially after seeing Daisy is with him. They go out and once Jack leaves the table to get Daisy some cigarettes, Diasy asks if it’s her imagination or has Bates been staring at her this whole time. Bates admits she reminds him of someone, and they talk and flirt a little bit. Later, the three go back to the hotel and call it a night. As Bates goes to his room, he’s interrupted by an upcoming actor who tries to bother him for a potential job. Clearly not in the mood, he looks over and watches Daisy walking up the stairs with Jack. The two kiss, resulting in Bates having a flashback to when he first met Dorrie on the set of his own movie. Dorrie was an actress with a one-line part, and Bates struck up the conversation, admitting her beauty right away. It works and we then go through a small montage to see how things progressed in their relationship. Later, they hang out in his apartment and discuss her family life, her lack of confidence, and her mother’s mental health problems. After a pigeon flies in from the window, and Bates loses it trying to get it out of his apartment, she kisses him to calm him down.

In real time, he finally gets to his room at the hotel, only to find a crazed fan in his bed wanting to have sex with him. All she had to do was tip the porter to get in. Freaked out, he refuses, especially when she offers him brownies and weed. Things get even weirder when she admits her husband knows what is going on and is encouraging everything by driving her there. Following another day at the festival and further annoyance from fans, Isobel shows up to see an excited Bates. Isobel says her husband knew she was having an affair, so she admitted it and left him. Bates starts to feel pressure because this implies that she wants to be exclusive with him, but she says there’s no issue at all. They agree to meet up later, but Bates is now in a bit of a conundrum. Now, in the midst of this small retrospective of his film career, Bates thinks about these three women in his life. Should he make this thing with Isobel happen? Does he pursue Daisy? Will he ever get over Dorrie? This is an important weekend in Bates’s life. On top of it all, he has to worry about studio interference on his new movie, and he’s not happy about it.

My Thoughts:

Stardust Memories is hard to rate. On one hand, it’s a fascinating portrait of a filmmaker in the middle of a career-defining and personal life-defining crossroads. On the other hand, it wanders in search of a premise while throwing arguments and meaningful (but aimless) conversation at us. Depending on what mood you’re in, you may find the screenplay for the film a funny and intriguing take on celebrity, existentialism, and psychology, or a messy casserole of self-indulgence at its finest. Personally, I think it’s the former, but I can see why the film is one of Allen’s more divisive additions to his filmography.

As with most Woody Allen films, it’s all about the dialogue. Though the conversations being had are interesting and there are many colorful topics covered by the neurotic Bates and the women he chases, the goal of the film is unclear enough to where it lowers the meaning of what’s being said. There’s no endgame. It gets difficult to pinpoint what director Woody Allen’s goal is with Stardust Memories. A lot of things said are funny and the discourse he has carries the film, but it doesn’t lead to anything definitive. This is why things get a bit hairy, despite the entertainment value of the film. The ending is strange as well because just as how you would with any surrealistic production, you’re left wondering what actually happened. There’s a serious lack of explanation, and you wonder whether the story of Sandy Bates is real, or Allen plays another character entirely based off how things end. It feels like a Wizard of Oz-type of ending. It wasn’t necessarily “all a dream”, but not enough was explained to make me differentiate if this whole thing was Bates’s life, a film of his, or if Bates is a different person entirely. Did any of this really happen? I don’t know because it just ends without explanation. Its ambiguousness can annoy you.

Again, it was fascinating but frustrating. What saved the basic premise of the movie was everything else.

Stylistically, this is one of my favorite Woody Allen films. There’s something special about a modern film shot in black and white with a classy jazz soundtrack. In his earlier years as a filmmaker, Allen always did a great job with the music and the look of the film. It always felt different, like an event. It’s calm tone throughout helps with the twisted narrative structure as it weaves in out of the film-within-a-film format. In fact, the creativity of the narrative is its biggest strength. In one scene, we’re in real time at a film festival, but we’ll jump to a flashback without warning. Then, we’ll go into a scene from one of Bates’s previous comedic films. Sometimes, we’ll even jump to segue jokes that didn’t happen like the alien-landing bit towards the end. It’s strange and can be confusing if you’re not paying attention, but it’s never boring. Despite this strength mucking up the point of the film, it makes it worth watching from a creative standpoint. Very few films I’ve seen have this “good problem”, but Stardust Memories is one of them. So as the story takes a hit, it’s still a wildly entertaining creative endeavor, powered by an interesting vision. It’s still funny too, and it’s a great introspective look on the life of a celebrity, or the life of a filmmaker trying to evolve his work.

There’s something so serene about Stardust Memories. They way its shot is so smooth and easy-going to the point where you want to have a glass of wine as you watch, despite how in the dark you really are as to what is transpiring. Yes, the narrative can be somewhat chaotic but when it slows down and takes its time with certain scenes, there’s something so unexplainably beautiful about it. His memory of Dorrie while he’s playing Louie Armstrong’s cover of “Stardust” is a perfect example of this. It feels like a moment frozen in time in the memory of Sandy Bates. Everyone has that moment in their life where they can look back and think how happy they were for that one, perfect moment. Very few memories are emblazoned in one’s brain, but there are certain one’s that take you back like no other. This is where all the stars align, and everything about that memory just puts a smile on your face. Even though Dorrie is shown to be downright unstable, there is something about her that stays with Sandy. It’s why he never got over her and still thinks about her every day. At times, she was worth the headache. Singular moments like that make everything worth it. Something about this scene was so profound, as well as relatable and authentic in its portrayal. It’s hard to re-create a memory and make it work for a film, but this final “big” moment with Dorrie is exactly how I would describe a perfect memory to someone. It’s moments like these that show Allen’s true talents as a filmmaker, despite the imperfectness of some aspects of the movie. For some reason, this scene spoke to me which is why in those closing thirty seconds or so, I felt satisfied with the film.

The cinematography, the music, the lighting, and special moments like that aforementioned scene gave me a feeling of being whole. This is why it surpassed a lot of my issues with the many turns the movie takes.

Credit goes to the excellent performances of Charlotte Rampling, Marie-Christine Barrault, and Jessica Harper as the three women that have attracted Sandy. Rampling is very powerful as the beautiful but confidence-shot actress who can’t seem to get over her own insecurities. Seeing her over-think things in the name of success and tearing herself apart because of it is as distressing as you would imagine. The black-and-white really adds a lot to the mood of the Dorrie scenes too. Barrault is also very good as the only woman in Sandy’s life that seems somewhat normal. His only hesitation to pursue her seems to be her children, which creates for some funny but realistic moments many face. Even though this would add a lot of stress to Sandy’s life, you can see why he’s attracted to her. Then, there’s the secretive Daisy. With her indoor sunglasses, penchant for smoking, and the way she carries herself, she gives off this rare, beatnik quality. Harper is so attractive in this role, and I have no idea how to explain it. There’s a quality about her you don’t see often, especially in a character like this. She’s got a lot of personal problems and admits it to Sandy to try and throw him off, but he can’t seem to break his infatuation for her. I get it. Her personality, anxious demeanor, awkwardness, but natural coolness is striking. Daisy is someone you know you won’t end up with, but you’re addicted to wanting to get to know her. Honestly, I bet Sandy was thinking the same thing.

Woody Allen is still very funny as the lead and his love square with these vastly different women is very interesting to watch. Isobel is the closest to a wife there is, Daisy is attractive because of her elusiveness and enigmatic presence, and Dorrie is just so pretty Bates can’t seem to get her out of his head. As the film moves on, your thoughts on the matter won’t shift nearly as much as Bates does. It starts with Dorrie. I understand not being able to get over an ex-girlfriend such as Dorrie. You can see the impact she had on his life, despite her clear mental health problems, paranoid delusions, and a serious amount of self-doubt. She’s a headache, but Bates always thinks about her and the moments they had together. It affects him deeply. Now I’m not sure how she reminds him of Daisy, but my guess is that she has a lot of layers to her like Dorrie. She gets you at first with her looks, but as you get to know her, you start to learn how much more meets the eye. Isobel seems to be caught in the middle of it all. Despite cheating on her husband with Bates, she has her head screwed on straight more than anyone else in the film. However, she has to deal with an indecisive Bates and his priorities being all out of whack. Allen doesn’t tie up the loose ends to any of the three very well, but the road we take to watch him interact with all of them is very interesting. Once again, Woody Allen proves how good he is with romance dialogue, as well as existential thought. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, the script has issues. Many times, when Sandy is out with one of his three women, a lot of ideas and philosophies are brought up, but nothing comes of it. All of this interesting dialogue is said, but there’s no clear point being made. This makes the ending feel more like a timewaster (or a cop out like how that one fan in the audience pointed out at the festival) than it already may feel to some.

You could say that love was the answer Bates needed, but that would make it seem like it’s the answer to all of his problems. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Love answers a lot, but it doesn’t solve the neurotic questions Bates has. Additionally, he never closed the book on the other two women he doesn’t choose. Then again, was he with any of them? This is my issue with the ending. You’ll understand when you watch it.

I did enjoy how accurately Allen portrays celebrity life and having to deal with never having a moment alone. Many times, we see Sandy try to be cordial with hundreds of fans cutting into his conversations to try and tell him something, praise him, or hate him for his career. As awesome as it is being a filmmaker and artist, the price of fame is having to constantly deal with everyone else’s opinions about you and the things you create. Even in his most intimate of conversations he is having, you see how he is randomly interrupted by fans recognizing him, asking for an autograph, or saying something to him. It even happens when he deals with the police. It’s funny, but that realism really helps us understand the struggles of being Sandy Bates. Despite being labeled as a funny guy, the life he lives descends into bleaker depths by the day because of how his career consumes him. He can never find out the answers to all of his questions in life because he never has a chance to be by his lonesome. It’s wild to think about it. When you strip away all that money, you start to see the dark side of being a celebrity.

Usually, I scoff at celebrities saying stuff like this too, like “Shut up! You’re a millionaire!”. Stardust Memories was the first time however, where it actually got me thinking, “Okay, that is pretty annoying”. If you ever wondered why Allen has avoided the public for so many years, this film pretty much shows us why.

Speaking of which, many have questioned whether this film was based on Woody Allen’s actual life. He’s insisted this isn’t the case, but it seems kind of hard to believe, right? The movie is about a filmmaker that doesn’t seem too receptive to fame, who deals with serious relationship issues. At the same, his fan base continues to talk about how they like his earlier, funnier films rather than his serious endeavors. Does that not sound exactly like the real Woody Allen? Surely, he should’ve saw this coming. A lot of written comedy is based off of some type of truth, so I still find it hard to believe this film isn’t a little bit influenced from Allen’s own life.

Going along with this, there’s also that scene where Dorrie accuses Bates of flirting with her 13-year-old niece or whatever. It was funny for the movie but knowing certain accusations about Allen in real life, it’s hard not to do a double take in hindsight.

In terms of creativity and complexities regarding the message of the screenplay, Stardust Memories is one of Woody Allen’s most daring films. Though I can’t say it’s perfect, it has this inexplicable staying power in my head due to an inventive narrative structure, classic Woody Allen dialogue, some really well put together scenes, interesting ideas presented, a stylish look, and a magnificent soundtrack. It may not be your favorite Woody Allen film, but you won’t forget it nor regret watching it.