MOVIE REVIEW : A Blue-Collar Love Story That Won’t Wash

What feels wrong about the tepid, well-intentioned “Stanley & Iris” (citywide)? Almost everything, unfortunately. The grand, leonine director Martin Ritt and his writers, Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch, are frequent collaborators and vintage liberals and, let loose on an impassioned subject, they can make a screen crackle with emotion. That’s what they did with “Norma Rae,” where the unionization of a Southern textile mill became the impassioned background to the story of a woman finding her real worth.

This time, they’re telling a blue-collar love story about two people thawing-out emotionally, with illiteracy as a subtext. But in spite of individual lovely moments, the casting--particularly of Jane Fonda--and the screenplay give the picture a forced, bogus ring.

In a New England industrial town, we find Fonda as the recently widowed Iris King, straining to hold her family together. And though Fonda makes every effort at bein’ working-class folks, it’s a stretch that fails. How can you hide the bearing, the suntan, the workouts? They don’t help her blend into a bakery production lineup of untanned and somewhat doughy-looking co-workers. And when a purse snatcher grabs Fonda’s bag and runs, instinctively you think, “Boy, is he gonna be sorry!” Every high-impact inch of Fonda telegraphs “Don’t mess with me.”

The man who comes to her aid is Robert De Niro’s Stanley Cox, a loner currently working as a cook at Iris’ bakery. He’s something of a Thomas Edison when he tinkers with inventions in his elderly father’s garage and something of a misfit in the world because he cannot read.

De Niro is more of a chameleon than his co-star; he’s made blue-collar roles fit him like autobiography--which they’re not--but there’s a odd glitch in the explanation of his illiteracy. Stanley is the son of Leonidis Cox (Feodor Chaliapin Jr., “Moonstruck’s” memorable grandfather), an old-country emigre who, when he must go to a state old-age home, takes his cherished violin with him.

It’s not impossible to believe that a youngster with a traveling-salesman father could sit in the back of 50 different schools, skinning by the teachers in every one. That’s a shocking but entirely possible occurrence in this country. But you cannot believe it about this specific son of this specific father. With his culture, his love of music, this old-world papa would have taught his son himself, every night in the hotel room. It simply doesn’t feel thought-through.

Neither does the action, after the dire consequences when Stanley’s secret is finally revealed. Losing everything, as a last, desperate try he asks Iris to teach him to read. Through their nightly sessions in her kitchen, we’re supposed to be warmed by their budding romance. The chemistry here is not memorable: Even granted her the mourning period, Stanley’s like a friendly basset hound nuzzling a skittish thoroughbred. Old fashioned movie-star touches don’t help: At night on a park bench, the smitten Stanley says that Iris just stands out whenever he sees her. She ought to--that spotlight behind her hair makes enough light to work a crossword puzzle by.

Ritt, Ravetch and Frank are old hands at galvanizing audiences about specific evils, but “Stanley & Iris” isn’t exactly about illiteracy, a hydra-headed villain at best. It’s really a fake drama that doesn’t know which story it’s telling.

Is it the emotional trip back from widowhood? The gradual melding of two people who seem, initially, to be no more compatible than chalk and cheese? The saga of good old American know-how? Or the dilemma of teen-age pregnancy, a subplot involving Iris’ high-school age daughter (Martha Plimpton).

Actually, it’s a little of each, with imagined-family-life dialogue. It’s Iris saying, mock-cautionary to the pursuing Stanley, “We’re a noisy family,” when they’re the quietest family in the world; the quietest and most unreal. Remember “Punchline”? That was family life, and each one of those daughters had a distinct identity. Iris’ 11-year-old son is wallpaper that talks. Finally, why did the film makers think they needed this American Dream ending? Wouldn’t it be enough if Stanley was just a sweet, eccentric guy--who could read?

Well, there are some nice acting moments. Plimpton, who does teen-age exasperation better than almost anyone, does it well again, and De Niro, who has some poignant moments with Chaliapin, tries to inject a little bantering charm to Stanley’s courting and sparking.

Fonda has been most memorable working completely against expectation, playing “Klute’s” hooker or “The Morning After’s” almost-alcoholic actress, or when she’s on emotional home turf like “On Golden Pond.” Here’s she’s not only expected to be humble but noble, and the nobility sticks out all over her performance. Maybe that’s what Stanley notices about her; he could hardly miss it.

‘STANLEY & IRIS’

A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. presentation of a Lantana production. Producers Arlene Sellers, Alex Winitsky. Executive producer Patrick Palmer. Director Martin Ritt. Screenplay Harriet Frank Jr., Irving Ravetch, based on the novel “Union Street” by Pat Barker. Editor Sidney Levin. Camera Donald McAlpine. Production design Joel Schiller. Costumes Theoni Aldredge. Music John Williams. Sound Richard Lightstone. With Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro, Martha Plimpton, Swoosie Kurtz, Jamey Sheridan, Feodor Chaliapin, Harley Cross.

Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

MPAA-rated: PG-13 (parents strongly cautioned; some material may be inappropriate for children under 13).