Originally named Dandy, the All-American Girl. Neither its original nor its present title provides much of a clue to what this eccentric movie is about. Dandy -- one of the androgynous heroine's several aliases -- is an adult delinquent, a specialist in car thievery, who holes up like a mouse in a ramshackle condemned house, grabs her meals on the run in supermarket aisles, and hatches a scheme to parlay a stolen car and five pink slips into a sum of money large enough to allow her legally to purchase a Dino Ferrari (her idea of the ultimate status symbol). Nothing about Dandy's underground existence is very credible, but much about it is attractive. For one thing, there's her sporty wardrobe of American Funk fashions (a high school hero jacket, a lifeguard sweater, a Western-y fringed leather thing, and a serviceable trenchcoat). For another thing, there's her childhood chum, beguilingly played by Franklyn Ajaye, a fellow thief who believes in incorporating progressive business techniques into his shady operation. For still another, there's the outlaw characters' devil-may-care comfort in the world around them, an ease which derives from their total obliviousness to social customs. This movie is drenched in the romanticism of the dispossessed, but it mulishly refuses to link arms with its audience. In everything from Stockard Channing's flip performance, as Dandy, to Vilmos Zsigmond's sleek, glassy, overcast image, it is remarkably unwelcoming. Jerry Schatzberg, a director with a sophisticated camera eye, a slummer's taste in entertainment, and a moralist's need to dish out punishment in the end, steers the movie into a completely self-gratifying absorption with tone and tempo -- cool, studied, nonchalant. (1978) — Duncan Shepherd
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