When I was a kid, there were two standing arguments about pop stars among my circle of friends: Madonna vs. Cyndi Lauper, and Michael Jackson vs. Prince. My choices back then were Madonna and Prince.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Cyndi or Michael; I just preferred the risque edge that Madge and Prince had. I was obsessed with the videos for “Borderline” and “Lucky Star” and, like many girls who were Madonna fans in the mid-’80s, I wanted to dress like her and wear my hair like her — and my mom let me! Well, for Halloween anyway. When Desperately Seeking Susan came out in 1985, I begged my parents to take me to see it, but that didn’t happen. It only had a PG-13 rating, but it was “too adult” for a seven-year-old to see in the theater, or some such bullshit. So, I had to wait until it came on Skinemax a year later to see it.
In director Susan Seidelman’s film, bored New Jersey housewife Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) keeps track of the escapades of a woman named Susan (Madonna) and her boyfriend, Jim (Robert Joy), through the personal ads they use to communicate with each other. One day she decides to observe a rendezvous of theirs in New York City, but a bump on the head and a case of amnesia later, Roberta thinks she’s Susan and ends up on the run from some mobsters who are looking for the real deal. The suburbia-meets-big-city element provides a predictable plot device as Roberta’s square husband, Gary (Mark Blum), and his obnoxious sister, Leslie (Laurie Metcalf), begin looking for her and Gary meets the real Susan. Meanwhile, Roberta begins a new romance in her amnesiac state with Dez (Aidan Quinn), a film projectionist and friend of Susan’s boyfriend. The two women finally meet when they’re chased by a hit man who’s after some Egyptian earrings they have in their possession. Reviews I’ve read have called Desperately Seeking Susan a screwball romantic comedy, but I don’t really think that’s an accurate description.
