Looking for Mr. Goodbar

Earlier this evening I watched Looking for Mr. Goodbar on Netflix Watch Instantly.

It was on my mind because the other night I tried to watch something called John & Mary, a 1969 movie staring Mia Farrow and Dustin Hoffman playing two young people who picked each other up at a singles bar. So old movies about the seedy singles scene were on my mind.

I know I had seen Looking for Mr. Goodbar at some point as a kid or teenager (in fact, I'm fairly certain I read the book in junior high), but I don't know how I would have seen it. Would they have shown it on TV back then?

Anyway, this is a kind of weird ass flick. On the surface it's a cautionary tale about single women pursuing their rights to sexual freedom. It's about a young woman who leaves home, teaches deaf children by day, and cruises bars for sex at night. She is very into her sexuality, but has no desire for a relationship of any kind. In her quest for sex she lets a lot of dangerous characters into her life and her apartment, and in the end she is murdered (by a self loathing violent gay man).

There are many cheesy scenes and awkward edits, but it's kind of an interesting movie nonetheless.

I found the main character, played by Diane Keaton, difficult to relate to. Her lack of interest in relationships (romantic or otherwise) just felt kind of perplexing to me, and I couldn't help reading her as highly defended and bizarrely stubborn. Perhaps it's just the old fashioned romantic in me that has to interpret anyone who rejects intimacy as therefore being incapable of it (and thus represents a character flaw). Or whatever.

The other sad commentary concerned the men, who were all idiots, crazies, and assholes. In a way the movie raises the question, what's a sexually liberated woman supposed to do if all the men out there are stupid narcissists?