Jewish Princess

By J.C.

SHEILA LEVINE IS DEAD AND LIVING IN NEW YORK

Directed by SIDNEY J. FURIE Screenplay by KENNY SOLMS and GAIL PARENT

This movie asks the question: "Why do you suppose we pick the people we pick to love?" A character actually comes out and says that--rhetorically, to be sure, but without shame. As the question hangs in the air, like a cartoon balloon chiseled out of concrete, it raises another, more interesting point: Why do people make movies that ask questions like this?

Sheila Levine is based on a novel (written by Co-Scenarist Gail Parent) that sold fittingly few hard-cover copies. With the benefit of massive promotion, the paperback hit big, so perhaps the film makers thought they had a good thing. To make it better, they cast Jeannie Berlin (the scorned wife in The Heartbreak Kid") as the eponymous heroine. Sheila is fresh out of college, a Jewish princess from Harrisburg, Pa., who gets her heart broken in the big city. She falls hard for a doctor (mother will be pleased) who treats her casually (mother will be irked) and brushes her aside (mother will be furious). The doctor (Roy Scheider) takes up with Sheila's slovenly roommate (Rebecca Dianna Smith), who calls herself an actress but turns out to be... well, you can imagine. Mother would not be surprised.

Cinch Romance. Cow-eyed, clumsy, relentlessly but unknowingly masochistic, Mrs. Levine's little girl yearns for the doctor despite his manifest lack of interest. Well, he is not quite remote. He often looks affectionately at Sheila while waiting around for the roommate to get dressed. This gets Sheila crazy. Finally, the doctor bares his sensitive soul: it seems that a girl looked at him and said "Yuck" when he tried to claim a spin-the-bottle reward at the age of 10. After that confession, the romance is a cinch. He kisses off the roommate, and approaches Sheila humbly and lovingly, like the good, lost little boy she always hoped he was.

Jeannie Berlin, Elaine May's daughter, is clearly talented, but she cannot continue playing the kind of girl who feels incomplete without a shopping bag.

She is indulged in every frame by feck less Director Sidney J. Furie (Lady Sings the Blues), who lets her work without restraint. Such freedom is always the result either of the film maker's rapture or loathing, but in this case it is impossible to tell which. Berlin goes through awkward, putatively comic body move ments, as if trying to cry on her own shoulder.

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