The Damned

By R.S.

IN PRAISE OF OLDER WOMEN Directed by George Kaczender Screenplay by Paul Gottlieb

It is bad enough being an older woman in our society without being damned by the faint praise of this entirely fatuous, Canadian-made, soft-core film. Based on a novel by Stephen Vizinczey, it traces the romantic career of a youth (Tom Berenger) from his teen-age sexual initiation (by Karen Black, who betrays a certain nervousness in this comedown role) through various tedious amatory escapades with a number of older women. Some of them, despite the title and the falteringly worldly tone of the picture, actually treat him quite badly. This seems only fair, since he is himself either callous or exploitative in other episodes. All the couplings are accompanied by doltish dialogue, and they are staged with an amateurishness that would get them hooted off the screen in any decently managed hard-core house. And, though the women are not required to expose much of themselves, what they do reveal is photographed in a most unappealing manner. What's worse, the Hungarian revolution of 1956 is gratuitously hauled into the picture to give spurious significance to one of the hero's adventures. This trivialization of real tragedy seems the only truly pornographic thing about the movie, proof that it does not have even the courage of its own snickering commercial convictions.

-- R.S.

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