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Arts & Entertainment

Retrospective Celebrates Sexy, Cerebral Susan Sarandon

BAM honors actress's 40-year career with under-appreciated films, cult classics and Sarandon herself.

Susan Sarandon’s 40-year career is studded with seminal movies, from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “The Witches of Eastwick” to “Bull Durham” and “Thelma & Louise.”

In addition to those classics, fans can catch lesser-known films from Sarandon’s repertoire during BAM’s homage to the flame-haired actress, “The Susan Sarandon Picture Show,” which runs Thursday through Sunday at BAM Rose Cinemas. The program’s 13 films culminate in a talk by Sarandon following Sunday afternoon screenings in the Howard Gilman Opera House. A schedule can be found here.

“This series gives audiences the chance to discover films they may not be familiar with,” said Ann Yershov, BAMcinematek’s project producer. “She has such a diverse body of work, one that’s not easy to sum up. She can float from sexy to saintly, sometimes in the same role.”

Some of Sarandon’s overlooked gems include Billy Wilder’s “The Front Page” (1974), also starring Walter Matthau as a demanding newspaper editor and Jack Lemmon as a star reporter and Sarandon’s fiance, and “The Hunger” (1983), a cult vampire film with Catherine Deneuve. 

Another early classic is Louis Malle’s “Pretty Baby” (1978), in which Sarandon gives a challenging, nuanced performance as a prostitute who launches her 12-year-old 
daughter (Brooke Shields) into the business.

Sarandon and Malle teamed up again for “Atlantic City” (1980), which garnered five Oscar nominations - including Sarandon’s first Best Actress - as well as the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. (Sarandon won a Best Actress Oscar for “Dead Man Walking,” her 1995 film co-starring Sean Penn.)

“She’s made films that were risque and controversial when they were released, but have endured in the cultural consciousness,” Yershov said. “She has a unique ability to take a daring and even uncomfortable role and make it appealing to a wider audience.”
 
Sarandon has adopted uncomfortable roles offscreen, too, and turned them into courageous work. She made humanitarian trips to Nicaragua in the 1980s, to Guantanamo Bay more recently to demand the release of HIV-positive Haitians, and volunteered at Ground Zero. She also serves as a UNICEF Goodwill ambassador and in 2006 received the Action Against Hunger Humanitarian Award. 
  
In addition to her talk on Sunday, Sarandon will join John Turturro and Paul Schrader for Q&A sessions following Thursday evening screenings. Turturro directed her in “Romance and Cigarettes” (2005), a working-class musical in which Sarandon plays a frustrated housewife, while Schrader directed her in “Light Sleeper” (1992), about drug dealers in New York.

BAM often spotlights artists - an actor or director, producer or cinematographer - with a body of work that  “deserves to be looked at in the framework of a retrospective,” Yershov said.

Following “The Susan Sarandon Picture Show,” BAM will screen 25 films featuring Catherine Deneuve from March 4 to 31, and will also host the iconic French actress in person.

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