Underrated coming of age film

Teens grow up quick and “Foxes” tells us that they grow up even faster when exposed to the excesses, vices, and other pitfalls of Hollywood and Los Angeles. The film stars Jodie Foster and comes from Adrien Lyne, who would go on to make much racier pictures like “Flashdance”, “9 ½ Weeks”, and “Fatal Attraction”. Compared to those movies, and something like Larry Clark’s “Kids”, “Foxes” feels too subdued but it still sorta works as a coming of age story.

Foster plays Jeanie, who along with her three friends all come from broken homes and all are experimenting in some way with booze, drugs, and sex. The girls are inseparable, usually hanging out together and then finding their way to sleeping over at each other’s homes. Some even spend weeks away from what’s left of their family’s, too stressed out by their awful home lives to even want to deal with it.


Jeanie probably has the most stable of the four, yet her mother (Sally Kellerman) is 40, divorced, and willing to sleep with any man willing to give her the time of day. Unlike her friends, Jeanie seems to at least want to crave stability. She’s just not going to get it from her mom and her dad is a manager for a rock and roll band whose on the road most of the year. Jeanie just wants her own place, and in this, it may be the best thing for her.


Her friends have bigger problems. Annie (“The Runaways Cherie Currie) is so maladjusted that she’s already on probation and willing to get into a car with any loser around. Her dad is constantly after her and so fed up he’s ready to put her away. Deirdre (Kandice Stroh) is piling on boyfriend on top of boyfriend. And overweight Madge (Marilyn Kagan) wants to lose her virginity so bad that she enters into a creepy relationship with a much older man (Randy Quaid).

The movie follows the four girls as they head out together for nights on the town, going to rock concerts, hanging out in parking lots, getting drunk, oogling boys. At one point they manage to get themselves into a parent-less house and decide to throw a dinner party, something mature, only for the film to follow the 80’s movie rule that if you have a parent-less house, a rowdy party has gotta break out eventually.

These kids live on the cusp of adulthood but lack the maturity to know how to handle it. They’ve essentially been left to fend for themselves yet been handed the keys to all sorts of adult vices without being given the tools to know how to handle them. The drugs and the booze isn’t so shocking but the permissive way girls talk about sex in the film goes past the point of female liberation into a scary sort of flippancy.

The scenes between Foster and Kellerman also come loaded with hot button issues- primarily a mother’s role post-women’s lib, post-divorce. Here’s a woman caught between trying to restart her life while also being a parent. She’s going to school, same as her daughter, and she’s trying like hell to find companionship in her life…also while competing against younger girls like her daughter. She’s self-absorbed but also humiliated that this is her life. She at least wants better for Jeanie.


Maybe this is why Foster often comes off as more mature than everyone else. This feels like a transitional role for her, something to show she can really pull off something adult. And she’s great here, making Jeanie almost a den mother to the other girls. Sure, she wants to have experiences but she stops short of irresponsibility. She’s dependable and has a good head on her shoulders, and she’s easy to root for to get out of the messiness.


“Foxes” comes off like a movie that, though rambling, loosely plotted, and fairly tame in showing actual depravity, knows a thing or two about the way teens talk and the way they act. It hits on a couple of important issues and contains some solid performances, especially Foster’s. Surprisingly, it’s not as well known in most coming of age movie circles, which is a shame as it really does have something to say.


It also contains a pretty cool soundtrack, including Donna Summer’s “On the Radio”, which i’m pretty convinced the movie was trying super hard to make into a hit. Mission accomplished. I can’t get it out of my head.