Thirty years ago, the world was swooning over Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice adaptation … but all the time, the actual Jane Austen screen sensation that year was happening elsewhere in plain sight. Amy Heckerling’s high school romcoming-of-age masterpiece, inspired by Austen’s Emma, is now on re-release for its 30th anniversary and more than ever it feels like a complete joy, a deliciously movie-literate (and literate-literate) classic, with references to Stanley Kubrick, Oscar Wilde and William Burroughs to go with the Austen parallel.
Clueless is something to compare with Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story – and Alicia Silverstone’s final, tearful scene matches, and even outclasses, Julia Roberts’ speech in Notting Hill about being just a girl standing in front of a boy. Like Withnail and I, it’s a film which is composed entirely of quotable funny lines and for each rewatch fans could lip-sync along with the entire film. Maybe some of the material wouldn’t fly now – Cher’s body-image jokes (“I feel like such a heifer!”) are … of their time … but what contemporary movie has this level of sustained wit and fun?
Silverstone gives a lovely performance as the spoilt, yet innocent and sweet-natured not-quite-16-year-old Cher (like her friend Dionne, played by Stacey Dash, she is named after a star of the past who does infomercials). She is the daughter of a widowed, wealthy lawyer in Beverly Hills, played by the formidable Dan Hedaya, who had terrified audiences in the Coen brothers’ debut Blood Simple. Cher’s conceit is gently mocked, and yet we’re always laughing with, not at her. Silverstone is amazingly innocent and charming and her sublimely weightless screen presence has a kind of serenity and maturity that belongs to an instinctive comedy performer.
Super-popular Cher, having already played matchmaker to her two teachers Mr Hall (Wallace Shawn) and Miss Geist (Twink Caplan), decides in her high-handed and meddling way to take a new student under her wing: maladroit suburban kid Tai (Brittany Murphy). But the endlessly considerate Cher, always thinking of others in her narcissistic way, finds it poignantly difficult to find a soulmate herself, having conceived a tendresse for the beautifully dressed Christian (Justin Walker) who seems to be more interested in hanging out with other guys. The awful truth is that Cher may have feelings for her goofy, annoyingly progressive stepbrother Josh (Paul Rudd).
Watched again 30 years on, it’s impossible not to marvel at the fact that eerily youthful Paul Rudd really doesn’t look much different now (really, it should be Rudd, not Sarah Snook, doing a stage version of The Picture of Dorian Gray). There is also, sadly, a tone of melancholy in savouring Murphy’s terrific performance; she died in 2009 of drug-related issues aged just 32 and like Silverstone, she was a natural comedy player and, also like Silverstone perhaps, she never got a role as good as the one in Clueless. There is great stuff also from Breckin Meyer as stoner skater-boy Travis, with whom Tai is really in love, Donald Faison as Dionne’s boyfriend Murray, Jeremy Sisto as the caddish Elton, and also Walker as the sleek gay exquisite Christian. Never was a title more misleading. This is sophisticated pleasure.
• Clueless is in UK cinemas from 27 June, and is streaming on digital platforms in Australia.
