Reuben, Reuben 1983

Gowan McGland, Tom Conti, is a creatively blocked Scottish poet who ekes out a day-to-day existence by exploiting the generosity of strangers in an affluent Connecticut suburb, where he recites his verse to various arts groups and women’s clubs. He is something of a leech, cadging expensive dinners from well-off patrons (usually stealing the tips afterward) while seducing their bored wives and adopting a superior attitude toward the smug bourgeois types he exploits.

Although a talented poet, he is a chronic drunk, indifferent to the wounds he can casually inflict with his wit.

“Released from their support, her breasts dropped like hanged men,”

Geneva Spofford, Kelly McGillis, a young college student who has everything to lose from a relationship with a drunken, unreliable poet who cannot hold a job, becomes the object of Gowan’s fascination. Gowan drifts into a romance with her that feels dangerous and—a little amusing in its audacity—against the backdrop of the suburb’s refined rituals. He instigates two ugly incidents that fracture their bond: first, a bar fight from which Geneva herself comes to his rescue, and later, a scene in a fancy restaurant where the staff clearly know he has stolen their tips.

The relationship falters and then confronts a harsher reckoning when Dr. Jack Haxby, Joel Fabiani, the dentist, discovers the affair and uses the pretext of offering free dental care to ruin Gowan’s smile, forcing him into dentures. The blow lands hard, and when Gowan learns of the ruse, it feels almost foregone, as if the loss of his teeth would amount to a kind of death.

Gowan’s spiraling self-destruction reaches a fever pitch as he prepares to hang himself. He dictates his last thoughts into a tape recorder, and, in these moments of supposed finality, he still manages to conjure some strong lines that hint at his enduring talent and stubborn will to write. Yet the moment is interrupted by a playful, real-world interruption: the host’s Old English sheepdog, Reuben, bursts into the room, startling him and tipping the balance just as he tries to undo the knot. The attempt ends in accidental asphyxiation, and the film’s title is said to come from Gowan’s final, doomed words—the last, ironic phrase spoken as he tries to halt the dog and escape his fate.