Texasville (1990)

Such a frustrating disappointment

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Good sequel to the superb The Last Picture Show, also directed by Peter Bogdanovich, 19 years earlier. Whereas The Last Picture Show dealt with the decline of small-town America, Texasville shows it still exists, but barely. Focuses on the lives of several middle- aged people, mostly the main characters from The Last Picture Show, and how their hopes and dreams have faded and reality is less pleasant.The feeling of nostalgia, of tedium, of lives going nowhere, yet hope within that emptiness, is tangible. Among this drama, there is great humour, however.Superb performances all round. This role was probably the one that turned Jeff Bridges into the downtrodden, bedraggled anti-hero, and launched countless roles for home. Cybill Shepherd is solid as Jacy. Next to Bridges, the star turn belongs to Annie Potts who is simultaneously beautiful, funny, sassy and intelligent as Karla.Ultimately does really make as big an impression as The Last Picture Show, and sort of fizzles out towards the end. The destination is quite tame, but the journey is worth taking.

Jacy Farrow(Cybill Shepherd)returns to Texasville where she was the homecoming queen for the town's celebrated Cintennial. Automatically old feelings are bound to return, though middle age has shaped Duane Jackson(Jeff Bridges)into a man who buries most of his feelings, yet he isn't prone to conflict. This film rarely has any outbursts despite the adulteries both Duane and his wife Karla(Annie Potts)are having on the side. Their marriage is one of many things focused on in this character study which can bring a multitude of emotions thanks in part to a cast who forms complex performances to the forefront. Returning from the original are Ruth Popper(Cloris Leachman)still very much in love with Sonny(Timothy Bottoms)who is slowly losing his grip on reality seeing things from the past which aren't there to anyone but him. Ruth is under the employ of Duane whose oil business is drowning in debt. Lester(Randy Quaid)is a banker now, Genevieve(Eileen Brennan)is still around as a gal Duane and others can chit chat with. Duane has a son, Dickie(William McNamara)who frequently dates various rich older women.Doesn't necessarily follow a plot narrative as much as the film is character-driven. We enter their lives at the Cintennial and watch as they go through the little quirky dramas. It isn't your usual drama and goes through various episodic dramas with Duane mostly at the center. What makes the film so odd is the way Duane and Karla remain together without ringing each others' necks. They know that each other jumps in and out of bed with others yet still maintain their family. Even weirder is how Jacy comes right into their lives, possibly a threat towards the marriage, yet she becomes quite good pals with Karla. Nothing operates the way you expect..I like this. I don't believe life follows a narrative thread. We all have our episodic dramas. There isn't always an exact end until we're under the grave. While the cast is very good, Annie Potts is just splendid while Bottoms as the tragic, troubled Sonny gains great sympathy for his mental plight. I just love to watch Bridges, especially when he won't reveal everything, yet when he does speak it often just makes simple sense. If you like heightened melodramas where characters scream and yell(..or, better yet, are directly confrontational), this film isn't for you.

Interesting film, it seems that is a real life where everybody does more or less what he/she wants. Jeff Bridges is a rich man, but near to bankruptcy due to many debts, married to a very nice lady (Annie Potts, whom it would have been much better to keep her than to look at others less beautiful than her)with several sons and daughters, living in a large house where everybody did what he/she wanted and were all somewhat hysteric. Bridges tried to escape and to behave like a bee smelling each flower he finds around, some of them wives of his supposed friends. Suddenly a former classmate of Bridges, the actress Jacy Farrow, arrives in the town and starts looking at Bridges asking him for love and sex. It is difficult to understand how his wife (Annie Potts) accepted all this relationship. She could have been the most smartly developed woman of the world, but to accept his husband playing with another woman candidate, it is only seen in films. The end of the film does not give any solution to the problem, but puts the things how really are in the modern society.

Texasville is easily one of my favorite movies of all time because it doesn't go down the easy road, trying to please everyone, by being the same movie as Last Picture Show was. However, after having seen both Picture Show and Texasville back to back I noticed how surprisingly similar in context and theme they are. Both are about sad adults who look longingly onto the younger generation, all the while committing adultery as a way of recapturing their youth. I love both Picture Show and Texasville equally; but have a soft spot for Texasville because I was 11 during the timeframe shown in the movie, and 17 when it came out in 1990 so it is a bit more relevant to me. Also the dark humor helps make the film more enjoyable for those hot summer nights when the urge hits me to see it.I've never thought of Texasville as fiction, more as cinematic fact. It's about as close to real life as you'll get without living it yourself. It was one of the first films I saw in a theatre as a cinema "connoisseur" and it'd be a shame to let it fade into obscurity. I highly recommend it to anyone reading this, a true minor masterpiece