Skip to main content

Remembering Anne Heche

I don't have thoughts on "Donnie Brasco" or the Harrison Ford rom-com, but Anne Heche did star in one of my all-time favorite movies, a movie I re-watch once per year--"Walking and Talking."


Heche is unforgettable to me for having played one deeply ordinary control freak, when she must have been still in her twenties. Heche is "Laura," a woman who isn't sure how she feels about her engagement. (Her fiance is Todd Field, the brain behind "In the Bedroom.") Laura begins flirting with other men, and she picks fights with Todd Field; for example, she really wants Field to have a certain mole biopsied. Laura's concern is nice, but it's also overbearing, and it begins to feel paranoid and even monstrous.

A fight gets out of control, and later, Field tries to apologize. He presents Laura with a small jewelry box--a mea culpa. But the box actually contains the tiny, biopsied mole. This is a terrible, clumsy joke--and it's also slightly mean--and the engagement crumbles, once again.

Anne Heche is a mess throughout the movie, struggling with tiny indignities: a bad makeup consultation, a misunderstanding about a ring, a series of mysterious prank phone calls. She is wildly irrational--she plans her wedding even after dumping her other half--and still she just keeps trudging along. It's so easy to connect with her.

We wouldn't have "Laura" without Anne Heche--so that's what I'm thinking about this weekend. I'm so glad Heche made this movie.



Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Adolfo ProfumoAugust 13, 2022 at 9:21 PM

    We say in my community: "May her neshama have an alyah" -- "May her soul be elevated" and, I would add, my she be sending us blessings from above now that her suffering on earth has ended and now that she is in The Light.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Host a Baby

-You have assumed responsibility for a mewling, puking ball of life, a yellow-lab pup. He will spit his half-digested kibble all over your shoes, all over your hard-cover edition of Jennifer Haigh's novel  Faith . He will eat your tables, your chairs, your "I {Heart] Montessori" magnet, placed too low on the fridge. When you try to watch Bette Davis in  Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte , on your TV, your dog will bark through the murder-prologue, for no apparent reason. He will whimper through Lena Dunham's  Girls , such that you have to rewind several times to catch every nuance of Andrew Rannells's ad-libbing--and, still, you'll have a nagging suspicion you've missed something. Your dog will poop on the kitchen floor, in the hallway, between the tiny bars of his crate. He'll announce his wakefulness at 5 AM, 2 AM, or while you and another human are mid-coitus. All this, and you get outside, and it's: "Don't let him pee on my tulips!" When...
3 comments
Read more

On Being Alive

Life, you’re beautiful (I say) you  just couldn’t get more fecund, more   befrogged  or  nightingaley , more   anthilful  or  sproutsprouting . I’m trying to court life’s favour, to  get into its good g races ,  to  anticipate its whims. I’m always the first to bow, always  there where it can see me with  my humble, reverent face, soaring  on the wings of rapture, falling  under waves of wonder.... This is the opening of "Allegro Ma Non Troppo," a poem by Szymborska. The speaker is a powerless courtier; life itself is Henry VIII. You try to make the King happy.  The speaker thinks she can please life itself by being appropriately joyous, soaring "on wings of rapture," falling "under waves of wonder." If you demonstrate enough wonder and rapture, you might impress God, and then God might reward you with an easy pathway. Of course life doesn't actually work this way, an...
3 comments
Read more

Josh at Five

 Joshie's project is "flexibility"; the goal is to see that a plan is just an idea, not a gospel, not a guarantee. This is difficult. Yesterday, we went to a restaurant--billed as "open," with unlocked doors--and the owner informed us of an "error in advertising." But Joshie couldn't accept the word "closed." He threw himself on the floor, then climbed on the furniture. I felt for the owner, until he nervously made a reference to "the glass windows." He imagined that my child might toss himself through a sealed window, like Mary Katherine Gallagher, or like Bruce Willis, in "Die Hard." Then--thank the Lord!--I was able to laugh. The thing that really has therapeutic value for Joshie is: a firetruck. If we are out in public, and he spots a parked truck, he wants to climb on each surface. He breathlessly alludes to the wheels, the door, the windows. If an actual fire station ("fire ocean," in Joshie's parla...
Post a Comment
Read more