Kritiken

Each film is unsettling—Unsane for its claustrophobia (enhanced by Soderbergh's use of an iPhone camera) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar for its streak of simultaneous cruelty and moralism, which hasn't aged very well.

There are films that ripen on the vine, and then there is "Looking for Mr. Goodbar," Richard Brooks's 1977 adaptation of the Judith Rossner novel... While Brooks's film made bank, reviews were mixed. Viewed forty years later, you can see why. Its ambivalence about independent female sexuality makes for a jarring, fractured viewing experience if also a fascinating time capsule of the hypocrisies necessitating today's #metoo revolution.

What makes the film so fascinating and repellent at once is precisely the confusion and anxiety it articulates about women's sexual freedom.

It'd be wrong to suggest that Looking for Mr. Goodbar is an easy watch, but it's nonetheless worthwhile. In spite of its excesses, there seems to be a pitched internal battle for the film's soul throughout. The no man's land between unruly female defiance and reactionary backlash is a peculiar place for Looking for Mr. Goodbar to land – but it's a revealing one.