Paper Moon
“Ain’t she got a sweet face … somehow …”
I’m so stupid, lol, I only just realised now, half an hour after the end credits roll, that Tatum O’Neal is Ryan O’Neal’s daughter 
I just didn’t make the connection for some mad reason lol. Hmm, maybe that’s why they have such great chemistry?
There’s a massive Lolita-ish element here which came as a huge surprise to me. Of course, you could almost call it Lolita with the pedophilia replaced by a good deal of hustling but I always found the whole “road-trip” part of Lolita as big a part of the story as its more infamous element; and the way Addie here gets wise to what’s going on as the movie progresses here is also very familiar. I watched Luc Besson’s The Professional again the other day and there, too, now, I see the influence this had – The Professional could almost be called “Paper Moon” with the conman replaced with the hitman.
As I said in my Noises Off… review, I hadn’t really seen a Peter Bogdanovich movie before today, and here, nearly 20 years before that movie, the technical perfection is already the first thing to mention. It’s beautifully shot. I feared for a long time during the second half that there was a lack of heart in the proceedings, but that too really comes to the fore in the end. To continue the Lolita comparison, Tatum O’Neal is no nymphet – but that quote I started with, though delivered slightly cruelly in the movie, is absolutely spot on about her. She’s almost boringly tomboyish when we first see her, but as the movie progresses, we see these moments, like when she’s putting perfume on in the mirror and finally flashes a smile at herself; it’s like as she gets wise to the set-up and realises she can do pretty amazing things (morals and ethics aside), she finds the girl, the woman even, in her. The moment when Ryan O’Neal receives the picture from which the movie’s title comes, and that silence between them at the end when they’re “reunited”, reminded me of one of my absolute faves, Pieces of April – sigh that moment when April sees her mom at the door at the end – it really took me unawares emotionally because I’d almost given up on the idea of the movie having such a heart. The technical perfection makes the movie an undeniable classic; it’s the moments like those that make it a certain future favourite for me.