'T. R. BASKIN'.......SEXIST AND THE CITY.......

T. R. Baskin (1971)     Funny how we came across this one the day after we weighed in on the titanic Scorsese Versus The Comic Book Movies debate.......

                 We strongly refuted Scorsese's 'not cinema' declaration, but fully agreed with him that comic book movies are nothing but filmed theme parks.......(along with our own opinion that there's too damn many of them.......superhero movies, that is....not theme parks.)

                 'T.R. Baskin', a perfect example of script-driven, actor driven 70's cinema is probably the kind of movie that Scorsese fears long gone from  mainstream studio filmmaking today......in favor of.......well, you know what....the spandex brigade.

                  True enough. No major studio today would go anywhere near 'T.R. Baskin'. You could call it a prehistoric version of an Independent film........a modest dramatic coming-of-adulthood tale, centering on one woman and her separate encounters with two men.

                    T.R. (Candice Bergen) arrives in Chicago, fresh off the bus from Ohio and bravely makes her way through the big city maelstrom to secure a job and an apartment.....

                     Armed with an ultra-dry wit, courtesy of Peter Hyamns' script, T.R. deftly navigates the corporate idiocy of her workplace (a big-biz satire-worthy outfit requiring hundreds of typists).......but her attempts at a social life are disastrous and sad......

                      The stories of the the two men in her life play out in reverse order......(the reason for this apparent only toward the end of the film......)

                        Inexplicably (to us, at first) T.R. agrees to hook up with with Jack, (Peter Boyle) a lonely, married travelling salesman looking for quick hotel nookie while he's on the road. Even more confounding, Jack got  T.R,'s number from children's book editor Larry (James Caan), who was T.R.'s previous sexual encounter......

                       T.R.s painfully awkward night with Jack turns out sexless but leads to poignant,  bittersweet conversation......and her reason for posing as the prostitute Jack mistakes her for is explained in the flashback in which her date with Caan comes to a wrenching end.......

                      You may well wonder why, in a city the size of Chicago, T.R.'s love life is so exclusively toxic.......(in one of the film's most telling moments, T.R. 's stuck in the company of a loathsome misogynist. who's oblivious to her sly digs at him. His denseness finally forces her to  give up subtlety and directly blurt out ..."you're a shmuck."

                      And that's pretty much the whole of 'T.R. Baskin'.......a plethora of witty comebacks which Candice Bergen wields like well-aimed darts.......the sad, but funny scene between Bergen and Boyle.......and some on target swipes at corporate crapola.....(along the lines of "The Apartment" and "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying"....)

                        3 stars (***) for the kind of modest little drama that defined 1970's movies.......and we don't mind telling you, BQ derived more cinema pleasure from this film's 90 minutes then the combined running times of the last three Avengers movies......