Smooth Talk

Connie Wyatt is a restless 15-year-old who is anxious to explore the pleasures of her sexual awakening. Before she enters her sophomore year in high school, she spends the summer moping around her family farm house. She suffers from her mother's put-downs, while hearing nothing but praise for her older sister, June. Her father somehow manages to float around the family tensions. She also helps paint the cottage, just as her mother constantly demands her to.

Connie passes the time cruising the local shopping mall with her friends and flirting with boys. However, when an actual date leads to heavy petting, she escapes from the boy's car. At a hamburger joint, an older man confides to her, "I'm watching you!" and proves this soon after. One afternoon, her mother and June warn Connie to be careful with whom she flirts with, and she is left alone in the house, while her family goes to a barbecue.

Later, as Connie is playing around the house, a man who calls himself Arnold Friend approaches her in a 1960s convertible with that name painted on it and identifies himself as "A. Friend". He dresses and behaves like James Dean, and name-drops several teenybopper acts, even though he is much older than she is. He comes off very kind and friendly, but rather suspicious, alternating between speaking to her in a warm, seductive voice and shouting insults to his fellow car passenger when he asks Arnold if he should pull out the phone, possibly to keep her from calling the police. Arnold informs Connie about how he has been watching her and that he knows all about her, recounting the details about her family's barbecue plans with amazing accuracy. He then begins speaking about how he could be her lover. She begins to become scared and orders him to go, but he coerces her into going with him, threatening to burn down the house, while his friend remains at the house, supposedly to watch over it while they are gone.

When she returns home, Connie is bewildered and disheveled, and informs Arnold that she never wants to see him again. It is left ambiguous whether or not he raped her; it is implied that she isn't the same person she was at the film's beginning. After her family returns home, her mother tearfully apologizes to her for slapping her earlier that day, but Connie reassures her that everything is all right. At the film's ending, she doesn't inform June about what happened, but dances with her to James Taylor's recording of the song "Handy Man".

Filming of Smooth Talk took place in northern California in the cities of Sebastopol and Santa Rosa.[1]

Goldcrest Films invested £516,000 in the film and received £635,000 earning them a profit of £119,000.[5]

On Rotten Tomatoes, Smooth Talk holds a rating of 88% from 16 reviews.[6]

Roger Ebert [7]described it as “almost uncanny in its self-assurance”.

Kathy Shaidle described it as “searing”. [8]

The film was released on DVD by MGM Home Entertainment on December 7, 2004.[9] The film was released on Blu-ray for the first time by Olive Films on November 24, 2015.[10] The film will be released on February 23, 2021 by the Criterion Collection.

• Smooth Talk at IMDb
• Smooth Talk at AllMovie
• Smooth Talk at Rotten Tomatoes