WATCHABLE YEAR FOR ACTRESSES

It has been quite a lovely year for actresses. Within recent weeks there have been the pleasures of seeing Anne Bancroft, Meg Tilly and Jane Fonda in “Agnes of God,” Sonia Braga in “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” Glenn Close in “Maxie” and Meryl Streep in “Plenty,” to take a quick sampling. Miranda Richardson has been lavishly praised for “Dance With a Stranger” and Patrice Townsend has won part of the acclaim for Henry Jaglom’s “Always.”

Now we have among us Jessica Lange as Patsy Cline in “Sweet Dreams” and Glenn Close back again, this time as a reluctant defense attorney in “Jagged Edge,” both extremely watchable films and performances.

The list is partial. You could, for example, reach back earlier in the year to Mia Farrow in “The Purple Rose of Cairo” and Madonna and Rosanna Arquette in “Desperately Seeking Susan” and Anjelica Huston in “Prizzi’s Honor,” and more. Not bad for a year otherwise rich in beefcake and teen yearnings.

In a curious way, “Sweet Dreams,” directed by Karel Reisz from a script by Robert Getchell, is a daring film, principally because the very successful “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (from the same producer, Bernard Schwartz) was a dangerously hard act to follow. The two films were bound to be linked by geography, the rags-to-riches theme, sound and even personalities, with Cline having been a friend of Loretta Lynn.

The drama, which gives an underlying tension to the whole film, is that Cline died in a plane crash at only 30, not yet the superstar she would undoubtedly have grown to be. It is probably true, in fact, that her singing became more widely known after and because of her tragic death.

Schwartz elected to do a love story, making the chaotic relationship between Cline and her second husband Charlie Dick a narrative line on which to hang an album of Cline recordings (convincingly lip-synced by Lange).

That the film works as well as it does is a personal victory for Lange. She conveys a spontaneous and ebullient woman in whom are combined a hunger for all the things money can buy plus an uninhibited sexual drive (rare in films in its honesty, but also in its visual restraint) that together constitute a sort of around-the-clock version of the American Dream. She is real, vital and wonderful to watch.

As her husband, Ed Harris is not less honest, a mixture of good-old-boy charm and latent rage (a blend of jealousy, frustration and whisky-soaked macho drive). He’s not so much a loose cannon as a loaded shotgun, waiting to be trouble. Harris does not make Charlie Dick lovable, but he makes you understand why Cline might have loved him, despite all.

“Sweet Dreams” is, by intention, a marital documentary more than a musical documentary (which it hardly tries to be at all). Getchell’s dialogue is right on and sharply funny. And Ann Wedgeworth as Cline’s sisterly mother makes a terrific character, full of down-home homilies and love.

But it is Lange who dominates the screen, and who keeps getting better and surer.

From her film debut as Garp’s mother in “The World According to Garp,” Glenn Close has brought an unusual and pleasing warmth to her roles. She can be tough and she is always intelligent, but the camera also perceives a depth of compassion and, with it, a bruiseable vulnerability. Those contrasting ingredients of toughness and vulnerability are crucial for any actress, and they give Close her large appeal.

“Jagged Edge” is, of course, that sure-fire item, the courtroom drama--which, as “Perry Mason” proved season after season, doesn’t have to be superior to be popular. But “Jagged Edge,” produced by Martin Ransohoff and directed by Richard Marquand from a script by Joe Eszterhas, is a very, very good and suspenseful entertainment. It has a serene and justified confidence in the red herrings the size of whales it drags across the trail of an ingenious murder mystery.

Women lawyers of my acquaintance are not pleased by Close as counsel for the defense whipping into bed with the client, with the suggestion that it happens all the time. Then again the client is Jeff Bridges at his most charming, and you might say it is just a kind of debriefing.

“Jagged Edge” does not presume to be more than a Hitchcockian thriller (“Witness for the Prosecution” being the once-and-forever trophy-holder in the genre). But it does have its resonances, including an object lesson nicely delivered by Peter Coyote that DAs can be heavily flawed, and a worrying realization that appearances can be deceiving and that justice, with the best will in the world and surprise witnesses by the dozen, may not always be served.