Slow Dancing

By F.R.

ROSELAND

Directed by James Ivory

Screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Most of Broadway's landmarks have been razed for parking lots or office buildings, but Roseland lingers on. The live-music dance hall is, as ever, a haven for serious dancers and lonely hearts of all races and classes; day and night they congregate on its spacious floor to reen act the rhinestone rituals of a gentler past. Even by the bizarre standards of New York City, Roseland plays host to a fascinating subculture-- though that could never be guessed from this series of distorted anecdotes. Roseland may vigorously open the doors of its anachronistic setting, but it never reveals the souls of people who reside within.

The film is a work of fiction, rather than the documentary it might have been, and it creaks to beat the band. Writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala tells three stories about Roseland habitues without revealing a valid emotion. The first anecdote, which resembles an episode from TV's old Twilight Zone series, concerns a widow (Teresa Wright) so obsessed with her past that she and the audience see a vision of her youthful self every time she gazes in a mirror.

Once the hallucinations disappear, Roseland glides on to the banal triangle of a wealthy woman (Joan Copeland), a narcissistic gigolo (Christopher Walken) and an awkward naif (Geraldine Chaplin). The final number features a retired cook (Lilia Skala) who dreams of winning a dance prize before she dies. The only prize the cook deserves is one for overheating her role.

With the exception of the delicate Chaplin, the other performers are as unacceptable as Skala, belting out their monologues, Broadway-style, in a series of relentless closeups. Only in the evocative dance routines, staged by Choreographer Patricia Birch, does the cast reveal any grace. In fairness, it must be hard to contend with roles like these: most of the male characters are pallid Tennessee Williams retreads, and the women are mere camp stereotypes. The movie's two quasi narrators -- a tough dance teacher with a 14-carat heart (Helen Gallagher) and a slick M.C. (Don DeNatale) -- are shamelessly derived from such sources as Cabaret, Sweet Chanty and They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Jhabvala, a talented novelist (Heat and Dust) and scenarist (Shakespeare Wallah), knows better than this. She and Director Ivory should also be aware that audiences distrust booming epiphanies of the cruel demands made by human affections. Still, Roseland is probably immortal. It has survived much in its long history, and it will doubtless survive the film that bears its name. -- F.R.

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