Desperately Seeking Susan

She’s got the look: unruly curls under a wide headband, a lacy top, and that now-iconic pyramid jacket. Dressed like this, and carrying her skull-patterned hatbox, Susan (Madonna, in her bold film debut) returns from Atlantic City to New York, where not only her boyfriend Jim awaits her, but also a certain bored housewife with a predilection for painfully dull pastel suits. Every day, Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) scans the paper for personal ads placed by Jim, who is “desperately seeking Susan,” and she dreams that her own life might, just for a moment, resemble the one the girl leads. So she abandons her cozy bathtub and her yuppie husband – and, by pure coincidence, her dream comes true. Desperately Seeking Susan is an ’80s spin on the screwball comedy, a genre-bending romp that only women could have pulled off, as the real spark ignites between two heroines who end up having adventures instead of taking care of the house. This wildly stylish, female-driven New York odyssey is a refreshing antidote to the wave of films about toxic masculinity presented at the time by New Hollywood directors, or guys with scruffy beards who wore baseball caps, as Seidelman calls them.