Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
 Amnesia,
mistaken identities and danger befall a bored housewife who
becomes involved with a free-spirited young woman.
Rosanna Arquette plays Roberta Glass, the bored Yuppie
housewife from Fort Lee, New Jersey, who swaps identities with the
free-wheeling New Wave girl, Susan (Madonna).
Susan gets romantic kicks by reading the personal ads in the
tabloids. For some time, she's been intrigued by secret messages
from a guy named Jim who is "desperately seeking" a girl
named Susan.
Suffocating in a shopping mall world of plastic values and
mediocre materialism, Roberta decides to investigate by answering
the ad herself, Following the real Susan, vicariously living her
wild Holly Golightly life, and pretending she's part of a kinkier
world for a few harmless hours, Roberta gets more than she
bargains for.
Susan is junk-shop couture, punk rock idealism, and Day-Glo
glitter. Roberta is suburban sensible, with a smart pageboy, a
shoulder-strap Lois Lane handbag, and a wardrobe from Bamberger's.
Then Roberta knocks herself out and gets amnesia and the real
fun begins. Now she's wearing more than Susan's clothes. She's got
her problems, too.
Susan's boyfriend Jim (Robert Joy), a rock singer, assigns his
pal Des (Aidan Quinn), a projectionist at the Bleecker Street
Cinema, to protect her. Des falls in love with Roberta, thinking
she's Susan. To complicate things, Roberta, who doesn't know who
she is, becomes Divina, Queen of the Night, in a magic show.
Pursued down filthy alleys in a purple tutu with a shopping bag
in one hand and a cage full of doves in the other, arrested by the
cops for soliciting, and stalked by a homicidal maniac, Roberta
sinks deeper into an acute identity confusion.
As the plot gets crazier, the movie grows more fascinating. Now
everybody's desperately seeking Roberta including her square
husband Gary, and the only clue poor Roberta has to unlock the
mystery is a key to a locker at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
The backdrop of New York is exquisitely high-tech contemporary:
Mohawk haircuts, surreal discos, spaced-out punk extras, the
iridescently lit world of midnight neon where Roberta ends up in
Susan's spike heels.
What is supposed to pass as farce, becomes sidetracked with
excessive complications and the story eventually loses momentum.
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