Roxanne

Based on the play “Cyrano de Bergerac”, large nosed C.D. Bales falls for the beautiful Roxanne while she falls for his personality but another man’s looks.

• Director:Fred Schepisi
• Genre:Comedy / Drama / Romance
• Runtime:107 minutes

Cast

Steve Martin : C.D. ‘Charlie’ Bales
Daryl Hannah : Roxanne Kowalski
Rick Rossovich : Chris McConnell
Shelley Duvall : Dixie
John Kapelos : Chuck

In the film, Martin plays C.D. Bales, the fire chief in a small American town in the Pacific Northwest. (Note that C.D. Bales’ initials match those of Cyrano de Bergerac.) Bales is witty, acrobatic, and skilled at many things, but he has a very large nose about which he is violently sensitive. He loves the beautiful astronomer, Roxanne Kowalski (Hannah), but she is infatuated with Chris (Rick Rossovich), a handsome but dim fireman. As in the play, Bales is touchy about his perceived ugliness (which he cannot get surgically altered because of a dangerous allergy to anesthetics) and speaks to the object of adoration the only way he can: he writes expressions of love in letter form and allows Chris to present them to Roxanne as if they were his own.

In the end Roxanne receives a letter from Chris telling her that he has left her for another woman. Dixie reveals that the letters that Roxanne thought were written by Chris were indeed truly being written for her by C.D. Bales. When C.D. arrives at her home she confonts him on the subject. C.D. and Roxanne then end up in an argument, she claiming that he was deceiving her and leading her on, while C.D. says that she wanted the perfect man, who was both emotionally and physically beautiful.

In the end C.D. and Roxanne forgive one another and Roxanne confesses her love for C.D. and his characteristic nose. She says that flat nosed people are too boring and bland, and that his nose gives him character.

In the end we see C.D. and Roxanne sitting on the roof of her house, gazing happily at the stars, the comet she has recently discovered clearly visible.

Among the side plots in the movie are: C.D. dealing with the incompetence of his volunteer firemen (whom Chris was brought in to help train), an insult fight between C.D. and a barfly, the appearance of a new comet which Roxanne came to observe, and a cafe owner (Shelley Duvall) who is a friend of both C.D. and Roxanne. Read more

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