Romancefest 2017: Valley Girl

I started to watch VALLEY GIRL a few years ago and got sidetracked and paused the movie to do something else. Now I've finally seen the rest of it for Romancefest, and I'm glad I did, because it's genuinely funny and romantic.

I guess VALLEY GIRL was responsible for most of the 80s, as it exposed the rest of the world to "valley speak" -- like, totally. The movie stars Deborah Foreman as the titular valley girl, and appropriately starts with her and her friends hanging out at the mall. Foreman dumps her "perfect" boyfriend (Michael Bowen) and falls for a punk rocker from Hollywood (Nicolas Cage).

We have kind of a star-crossed situation here because in the world of this movie, the valley kids view Hollywood or actual Los Angeles as shitty, and the valley as awesome. So, Foreman would be downgrading herself to pursue a romance with a dude from over the hill in the city, rather than with a dude from the valley. When I lived down there the valley was considered lame and it was cool to go over the hill to the city, but what do I know.

Apparently this was a low budget production that blew up into an unexpected hit, and I guess that is why the movie seems so fresh and original and specific. If it had been a major studio production from the beginning, it would have likely been homogenized to the point of not really being about any particular set of subcultures. Given the freedom to do what they wanted, the production features a lot of fun Southern California locations, fashions, and character types that many audiences at the time had probably never seen before. Also, the soundtrack is awesome. After hearing "I Melt With You" by Modern English over FM radio waves my entire life it was eye (or ear) opening to hear it on Blu-ray coming out of a digital surround system.

VALLEY GIRL was interesting to see right after FLASHDANCE because they're both from the same year, 1983, and they both, I think, endeavored to be strikingly modern and contemporary. FLASDHANCE took the more generic approach -- the movie rests on its technical credits, rather than striving for any kind of point of view. VALLEY GIRL is the opposite -- it might be a little rough around the edges, production wise, but its value lies in the specificity of the characters: the way they speak, their likes and dislikes, the world they live in, the music they listen to. What a fun movie.