Unlike
the high school hellcats twenty years before them, tossing globes out of
classroom windows and firing on police officers (see High School Confidential), Foxes
(1980), is a portrait of teenage torpor at the dawn of the Eighties. These jaded teens,
led by Jodie Foster, would rather pop a ‘lude and put on a Boston LP.
Examining
the loosely woven friendship between four high school girls in the San Fernando
Valley, each with typical problems of her age – and therefore seemingly
insurmountable – Foxes looks at how
each personality type copes with life, sex and parents, all of whom are
divorced and too busy trying to find themselves rather than guide their
children through the rockiest period of their lives.
Released
between two movies that became classics of the L.A.High School genre, Rock ‘n RollHigh School
(1979) and Fast Times at Ridgemont High
(1982), Foxes was more of a teen
drama that dared to bum out its audience with issues of teen pregnancy, drug
addiction and death. With murky cinematography, uneven performances and no
happy ending, it was promptly forgotten after its release and sank like a
stone, not even helped by its Giorgio Moroder music and title track sung by
Donna Summer (“On the Radio†plays over the opening credits.) It didn’t help
that the exploding punk scene that immediately followed gained ground quickly
and influenced the look of scores of more high school movies to come, quickly
dating Foxes’ sun-hazed ambience of
the late ‘70s. It was thus forgotten and became a relic of its time, classed more
with Skatetown U.S.A. than other frank, exploratory teenage dramas of the
same year, like Little Darlings (1980) with Kristy McNichol and
Tatum O’Neal, which is more of a true companion piece.
Jodie
Foster never mentions it in interviews, nor is it ever mentioned in career
surveys of her films. (Likewise her co-star, Scott Baio.)
But
when MGM re-issued the film on home video/dvd a few years ago, a younger
generation (born from the late ‘70s to the early ‘80s) discovered it and embraced
it, creating a revival of interest in the film that far exceeded its reception
upon its release. True to the “twenty-year loop†law, hipsters with an
insatiable appetite for the look and sounds of the early ‘80s began referencing
Foxes in a number of ways, from
fashion design to music, graphic design and photography. (Cherie Currie of The
Runaways, who plays ill-fated Annie, came in for special homage. She has a
peroxided, doomed rocker-chick look that was revived by the style icon actress
Chloë Sevigny.) It also started showing up in “best-of†lists by film
columnists and in critical essays in alternative weeklies and film journals
around the world.
Far
from being a great movie, Foxes is an
enjoyable period piece that is notable for its time for not being in hysterics
about being a teenager. It’s still a “message movie†in the same way that High School Confidential was about the
dangers of neglectful parents, except the message here is that the kids will
probably survive in spite of them.
Apart
from the principal cast of four or five young stars (Foster and Baio being the
marquee names), Sally Kellerman is excellent as the archetypal divorcee mother
of the ‘70s, complete with Toni perm and low-cut blouse. In one key scene, she
breaks down in front of her daughter (Foster), railing at how she and her
friends “make me hate my hips.â€
Look
for cameos by Randy Quaid, Lois Smith, Robert Romanus (Fast Times) and a pre-pubescent Laura Dern in coke-bottle
eyeglasses.