When Will I Be Loved

Neve Campbell (Scream) gives a daring (sometimes positively shocking) performance in cult writer-director James Toback's intriguing but frustratingly flawed film, a feminist revenge switch on Indecent Proposal. Alternately engaging, adolescent, coy, sultry, calculating, and mysterious, Campbell plays Vera Barrie, a young woman whose wealthy parents have installed her in a ritzy Manhattan apartment. Vera is beautiful but elusive, a curious combination of childlike and conniving; even during a job interview while walking down a New York street with an oddball Columbia professor (played by Toback himself), she interrupts to flirt with passing young men. But the real plot kicks in when her sleazy hustler boyfriend (Fred Weller) tries to make a bundle by persuading her to sleep with an elderly media mogul who's smitten with her, and she ultimately turns the tables on them both. Campbell effortlessly dominates the proceedings, and if Toback had found co-stars who could match her--and resisted a penchant for occasional handheld, improvisational messiness and a tendency to overuse the background music--he might have made a minor masterpiece. As it is, Campbell's provocative performance rescues When Will I Be Loved from any glaring weaknesses. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary by writer-director James Toback, four segments of “Scene Sexplorations: Vera's Sexscapades” featuring Toback and star Neve Campbell's scene-specific onscreen commentary, with the option to jump to the scene (9 min. total), and trailers. Bottom line: a small but solid extras package for a flawed but powerful film.] (F. Swietek)