A Confusing Mess! (Turner is beautiful though)
My friend Helen and me are both older and have recently begun to review movies on IMDB. We belong to the same knitting club and often report back to the other gals once we've seen the picture.
Body Heat is a film so steamy and full of hot air, we had to get the fan out half way through because we felt hot just watching it. William Hurt plays a lawyer in a very warm southern town, who likes to sleep with random women. It's an addiction for him, we guessed, to have sex with irresistible bombshells. Enter Kathleen Turner, a wealthy wife to a man she can't stand (very similar to her role in The War of the Roses). She meets Hurt during a summer evening, and he can't get enough of her sexual charm. He follows her home, but she refuses to let him in the house. So he breaks in - literally, and the two make passionate love. Helen and me were a bit taken aback by this- why would he have to break glass to have sex with her? She could have let him in.
Now it starts getting complicated. Turner knows her husband is loaded with money, so she plots with Hurt to murder him and then they can reap his fortune. They get away with the deed, but then a random attorney calls Hurt into a meeting and we discover the will is not valid- so the widow gets everything. This doesn't seem too pleasing to the dead husband's sister. Hurt is worried people will start catching on with who dun it, especially Ted Danson. He has the most confusing character ever. There's a scene where he tells Hurt "I AM your lawyer." Huh? That makes not an ounce of sense. Why does Hurt need a lawyer when no one saw him do the act? And why is Danson hanging around?
At this point, Helen and I do what we always do when the plot makes less and less sense. We reached for our knitting. We glanced up at the television from time to time, but by then the plot had become a big question mark. This movie relies more on style and substance then plot and character development. It's film noir, something a friend of ours said. It's not really meant to make sense- it's meant to be experimental. A movie with the same plot starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange also released in 1981- called The Postman Always Rings Twice. Why the studios would allow this is beyond Helen and me.
William Hurt was very attractive but it is Kathleen Turner who should get kudos for being drop dead gorgeous. Despite cleavage that is sorely lacking, she has a physique that would make Rita Hayworth jealous. She drips sensuality and we found her very convincing as a greedy and sociopath nut. It is too bad her future roles were all pretty much the same: cold, dominatrix type wife roles where she never is happy but it's never explained. We see why she only got one (1) Oscar nomination in her entire career for Peggy Sue Got Married, where she at least was a little more sympathetic.
Body Heat gets an A for Atmosphere; every scene illuminates backdrops of Miami in a plush and humid aesthetic; we were glad we had air conditioning viewing it. Fog, smoke, cigars and mirrors are all laid before us. It's too bad the plot unfolds and no one knows what's going on. It's her money, why are these annoying detectives bothering them?