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The Grime and the Glamour: 'Desperately Seeking Susan' at the Barbican

At a glance
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Time 19:00
Date 01/10/17
Price £9.5
  • Produced by Barbican
  • Price £9.50
  • Get ready for a new-wave comedy of errors
  • Bring along fingerless gloves and a bandana
  • Surf to Barbican
  • See you at Barbican

A quintessentially New York movie with a screwball plot, era-defining fashion and an I-want-to-be-that-girl performance from the Queen of Pop.

Madonna had just scored huge hits with Like a Virgin and Material Girl when she starred in this film as Susan, a Lower East Side-dwelling hipster who becomes an object of fascination to a bored New Jersey housewife (Rosanna Arquette).

A case of amnesia, stolen Egyptian earrings, and mistaken identities: the plot is screwball-farcical but allows for a wild ride through some choice bygone Manhattan locations including legendary four-floor nightclub Danceteria, veteran East Village vintage clothes shop Love Saves the Day, and the Bleeker Street Cinema, where love interest Aidan Quinn works as a projectionist.

And this before mentioning the film’s ra-ra skirts, bangles, pork-pie hats and side-laced can-can boots – and many cameos from downtown mainstays John Turturro, Richard Hell, John Lurie and others.

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