Endless Love
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Brooke Shields
Martin Hewitt
Shirley Knight
Don Murray
Richard Kiley
Beatrice Straight
With a nod to Romeo and Juliet, with which director Franco Zeffirelli enjoyed such success in 1968, plot concerns the scorching love affair between a 17-year-old boy, from a social-activist Chicago family, and a 15-year-old girl. Normally broad-minded, girl's father finally can't take it anymore when the boy more or less moves into his daughter's bedroom, and banishes him from the household for a month.
Since he's center stage most of the time, it's fortunate that newcomer Martin Hewitt registers so strongly. Zeffirelli has dressed and photographed his find almost in the style of some of his mentor Luchino Visconti's neo-realist heroes, with two-day beard growths and anachronistic Clark Gable undershirts.
Despite top billing, Brooke Shields disappears during entire center section of the film, which reduces extent to which film stands or falls by her work. One can never really tell what her responses to sex are because she's smiling all the time.
1981: Nomination: Best Song ('Endless Love')
An update was made to this review on Feb. 2, 2007.
(Color) Available on VHS, DVD (England only). Extract of a review from 1981. Running time: 115 MIN.
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