Klute
Wow I somehow went more than a full month without watching a single movie. I don’t know if that’s ever happened before, save for times when I was going from Cambodian hostel to Burmese temple complex. Klute is one of those movies I was vaguely aware of as being good (Jane Fonda won the Oscar for it) but knew almost nothing beyond that. Donald Sutherland is the title character, despite not really being the protagonist or the subject of the story. He’s not even curator of the Jebediah Springfield museum.
The plot is that a husband disappears, investigators discover that he had written a bunch of filthy letters to a prostitute (Fonda) before he did so. They couldn’t get anything out of her so they gave up and went home, so the wife hires John Klute to go find out more. There is actually a pretty good investigation plot; Klute spies on Bree, recording her phone calls, they team up to track down who sent the missing guy to her in the first place, there are mysterious deaths and a strong ending.
Most compelling though, is the relationship between Klute and Bree. He is set up as a no-nonsense, by-the-book investigator, who turns her down the first time she tries to seduce him. She is trying to edge her way out of prostitution and into acting or modelling, and they both compromise and improve each other as they fall into an ambiguous, ultimately unresolvable relationship. There are some therapy scenes that lay things out a little on the nose, with Fonda saying things like when she’s being paid she feels in control, and almost wants to sabotage the relationship because aspects of it are out of her hands. Therapy in movies always takes me back to Fry in Futurama: “ You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel. That makes me feel angry.”
Still, good job everyone. Intriguing mystery and well developed characters, high five.