Director Evelyn Purcell had worked for years as an assistant director and producer on ex-husband Jonathan Demme’s films before helming her own feature Nobody’s Fool (1986). Purcell’s style, like Demme’s, serves the off-kilter characters that populate the world of her film. Purcell’s camera records the actors’ performances with equal importance given to the physical spaces that they inhabit. Often Purcell starts wide then works her way in towards a close-up.
But Evelyn Purcell is not the lone author of Nobody’s Fool. The film was written by renowned playwright Beth Henley who had success bringing her play Crimes Of The Heart to the screen in 1986. Both Nobody’s Fool and Crimes Of The Heart center around eccentric women, mental illness and a morbid sense of humor. Nobody’s Fool subverts its romantic comedy status by way of Henley’s preoccupations; reimagining a love story as a solution to guilt, depression and ennui.
The heroine of Nobody’s Fool, played by Rosanna Arquette, is a hapless romantic who has just given her baby up for adoption and who engages in suicidal fantasies. Arquette’s character Cassie is the antithesis of the rom-com heroine. She may be cute, but she’s also manic, self-destructive, and uncertain. Her hangups are never fetishized because the film is solidly behind her and invested in her experiences far more so than in those of Eric Roberts, her love interest.
The small-town world that Cassie lives in is populated by odd-ball characters played expertly by some of the best character actors around. Mare Winningham, Louise Fletcher, and Stephen Tobolowsky all help to bring color and life to Cassie’s world. Purcell’s direction ensures that these supporting players get the screen time they deserve, allowing them to exist more as humans rather than archetypes.
Despite everything that Nobody’s Fool has going for it this film has drifted into obscurity. However, as women filmmakers continue to get the credit that they deserve in film history, Nobody’s Fool may get a critical reevaluation. It’s an odd film, but a thoroughly heartwarming one that does eccentric better than other more popular films like Benny & Joon (1993).
