Tuesday, September 27, 2005

John Simon

“Yet, I suppose, we must be grateful even for this much from an American movie, even one with a British director and one British scenarist. And there is the flawless performance of Kathleen Quinlan as , Deborah. Miss Quinlan has been good as a precocious tomboy in American Graffiti and overeager jailbait in Lifeguard, but I was unprepared for the staggering, unaffected integrity of this performance. There must be two tremendous temptations, especially for a young actress, in a role such as this: to act the sweet, lovable, lost soul, or simply, to overact. Miss Quinlan will have none of this: she is pitiful, ugly, even horrible, by turns, as called for, always in a manner that I must describe, for lack of better words, as crisp and efficient, and never suggests (as so many actresses would) an uncontrollable personal dementia of her own, only the sensitive and sensible enactment of it.”

John Simon
National Review, August 1, 1977

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