Klute: A Review

KLUTE

I find it surprising that 1970 cinema had a lot of paranoia around it. Surveillance, hidden recordings, the threat of crime everywhere. It might be an aftereffect of the trauma that Watergate created. Klute, the crime thriller about call girls and the men who use and abuse them, is one of the best in this subgenre. Standout performances and a strong style are some of Klute's best qualities.

Pennsylvania business Tom Grunemann is missing. After six months, his friend John Klute (Donald Sutherland) agrees to investigate. Klute's best clue is an obscene letter found in Grunemann's office addressed to a Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda). Bree is a struggling model and actress in New York City, where Tom was last seen.

Bree is also a call girl who by her own admission turns anywhere from 600 to 700 tricks a year. Bree considers these encounters something of an acting job. She has to feign interest, cater to a john's preferences and fake being someone else. Bree is well-paid for her charms, but she is also in therapy for her various personal issues.

Bree is also in danger. Could Tom Grunemann be the client that had roughed up Bree two years earlier? Bree has gone through so many men that she cannot recognize Tom by his picture. She agrees, reluctantly, to help Klute in his investigation. This requires Bree to metaphorically go into her past. The Grunemann case is connected to Bree's former pimp Frank Ligourin (Roy Scheider), who was the pimp to two other call girls connected to Grunemann. One is an apparent suicide. The other, Arlyn Page (Dorothy Tristan) is an addict.

Bree and Klute begin a personal relationship. For Klute, it is closer to genuine affection. For Bree, it is more complicated, a mix of genuine affection and manipulation for self-preservation. As Klute keeps digging, he finds that Grunemann himself may have been the fall guy to a multiple murderer. Arlyn herself is another apparent suicide. Could Bree Daniels herself be the next person on this hit list? Who is behind two to three murders? Klute, having zeroed in on his suspect, does crack the case. However, will Bree emerge from "the life"?

It is interesting that while the film is titled Klute, the focus is actually not on Klute. Instead, Klute is more about Bree. Jane Fonda in her Best Actress Oscar-winning performance is excellent as Bree Daniels. Fonda has to, in a sense, play several roles. There is Bree Daniels, the actual person who faces unwitting danger. She also has to play the various versions of male fantasies to her clients. In one scene, she tells a client a fantastical story about having just returned from Cannes while performing a strip show for him. The seemingly casual, flirtatious, cooing manner mask the deep self-loathing and fear that Bree has. Bree as portrayed by Fonda is pleasant, polite and seemingly in control. At one point, she is even able to make wisecracks in an amused manner. When John Klute gives her the taped recordings of some of her encounters, she quips that dirty messages were just what she wanted.

However, she is also troubled and slightly paranoid. Some of Fonda's best scenes are surprisingly not when she is interacting with others. Instead, it is when Fonda is monologuing to the therapist. We see the troubled, complex and disappointed woman. She fears that with Klute, she is doing something that she has not done or let herself do before. She fears that she is letting herself feel. Can someone genuinely love her, Bree Daniels, instead of the version that Bree presents to her clients?

Of particular note is when Bree is forced to listen to her friend's brutal murder that the murderer recorded. In a quiet, still sequence well-directed by Alan Pakula, we focus mostly on Fonda's face as she hears her friend live out her last moments of life. Bree does not openly react. There is no big, dramatic expression. There is no open sense of shock or even terror. Instead, Bree begins to softly cry. She is crying for her friend. She is also, I think, crying for herself. She may be crying because she fears that her life is about to come to an end. However, I think she is also crying for all that could have been, and, in those moments, she thinks will never be. It is a deeply moving moment so well-directed by Pakula and well-acted by Fonda.

Donald Sutherland is more capable of matching Fonda as the lead character. He brings a quiet manner to John Klute. Sutherland never rages or has a big, dramatic moment. In fact, John Klute is a very quiet man. Even his lovemaking is soft. Klute is polite, professional, calm and controlled. That makes when he roughs up Frank Ligourin a startling moment. Even in this scene, Sutherland does not show Klute to be brutal. He makes Klute into a passionate figure, but one who is forceful only when needed. 

Klute has outstanding work from Roy Scheider in an early role as the arrogant and sleazy pimp. It is a small role, but he makes the most of his screentime. The same goes for Charles Cioffi as Frank Cable, Tom's fellow Pennsylvania businessman who may know more than he admits.

Klute has a strong visual style, full of darkness courtesy of cinematographer Gordon Willis. We see sometimes a sole candlelight dominate the otherwise dark room, perhaps a metaphor for the dark world Klute is. Michael Smalls' score feels closer to something out of a horror film than a thriller. However, like the cinematography, it adds to the sense of dread and paranoia that Klute has. Andy and Dave Lewis' Oscar-nominated screenplay holds the viewers' attention and has good, logical turns. It also allows the viewer to be ahead of the characters, building up the tension. 

To be fair, I do not understand some of the terminology in Klute. When rattling off some potential kinks that Klute might be into, Bree asks if he's "a button freak". Maybe I'm just naive, but I've no idea what that could possibly entail.

I like to think of Klute as the dark side to Butterfield 8 or even Anora. All three films had women who sold their virtue who ended up falling for a particular man. All three also won their leading ladies a Best Actress Oscar. However, the latter two did not give their call girls anything close to a happy ending. Klute, despite the darkness it lived in, ends with just a glimmer of hope. Perhaps there can be life after sex work. Excellent acting and a taut story make Klute worthy of investigating. 

DECISION: A-