Mein wunderbarer Cadillac

My review was written in May 1989 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

Quite well-acted, "Valentino Returns" is an okay bit of Americana that has only modest theatrical prospects.

Lanky young thesp Barry Tubb is featured as a small-town teen in the 1950s whose rites of passage (presented rather episodically by director Peter Hoffman) include scrapes with the law, romancing neighborhood chicken farmer's daughter Jenny Wright and getting his even more adolescent dad, Frederic Forrest, out of trouble.

Adapted by Leonard Gardner from his own short story, pic is picaresque in tone, but given to dramatic outbursts, especially when concerned with Forrest's womanizing, confrontations with his long-suffering wife (Veronica Cartwright, excellent in an interesting interpretation) and various outlandish behavior.

Tubb, an appealing performer, is overburdened with a plot that places too much nostalgic weight on his treasured steed, a new pink Cadillac. Soundtrack echoes the overemphasis on atmosphere with a long list of song hits but no background score to cover the draggy sketches.

Jerzy Zielinski's lensing is evocative and the film climaxes on an entertaining note: Tubb's family finally is drawn together as a unit in protecting Wright from her mean father's wrath (and belt). THough pic was filmed in both California and Florida, with an extended production history, finished product bear little evidence of behind-the-scenes headaches Thank you credit on print go out to Sundance Institute, Fred Roos and Michael Hausman, among others.