Desperately Seeking Susan
**Seen at the 2025 Atlanta Film Festival
“Desperately Seeking Susan” isn’t one I would consider as being high on my watchlist, but when I first really heard about what Susan Seidelman’s film was about beyond the fact that it had Madonna in it, I was more than willing to elevate it up on the list when it was playing on the big screen for its 40th anniversary, and the director would be present. I’ll take that.
There are a lot of different influences you can feel in Leora Barish’s screenplay, but it approaches its influences in its own way that is unique and entertaining. The story is fairly straightforward, despite how convoluted it becomes- Roberta Glass (Rosanna Arquette) is the bored housewife of a spa and hot tub salesman (Mark Blum). She vicariously lives through the personal ads, especially a series of “Desperately Seeking Susan” ads by someone named Jim. Turns out Susan (Madonna) is a free spirited woman whom we meet in a hotel room in Atlantic City with a man who will be killed shortly after she leaves, and Jim (Robert Joy) is her on again/off again musician lover. One day, Roberta follows Susan, and next thing she knows, she’s attacked by someone looking for Susan, hits her head, and forgets who she is, just in time for a projectionist (Aidan Quinn) to mistake her for Susan.
It’s remarkable just how long it takes for Jim to meet up with Dez- Quinn’s character, whom he sent to meet Susan, whom he thought she was cheating on him- to find out that the Susan Dex picked up is not his Susan, but at its heart, this is a film built of farce mechanics, and Seidelman leans into that idea subtly, and in a way that we can engage with those logical fallacies. All of the characters here are familiar archetypes- including Roberta’s sister-in-law (played by Laurie Metcalf) and the creepy hitman (played by Will Patton) who causes Roberta to lose her memory- but it’s what the actors bring to each character that makes them memorable. This is ultimately a two woman show, however, and Arquette and Madonna are wonderful in their respective roles. Seeing how Roberta leans into Susan’s whole vibe, including buying a jacket she sells to a thrift store (which is where a large degree of the trouble occurs), and then what happens when Roberta gets her memory back; it’s a great showcase for Arquette to do something fun and also lean into the parasocial relationship we sometimes find ourselves having with people from the outside, which social media has only ramped up. And this might be Madonna’s finest work in film. She is playing a viral social media personality before that was even something that existed, and she exudes the confidence that was evident in her at the time, while also being given some layers to work in as she tries to figure out where Roberta is with her life. The final meet up between the characters and plot points is deeply silly, but this film is an absolute delight because of those absurdities. I’m glad I had the chance to see it on the big screen.
