Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
After her husband dies, Alice and her son, Tommy, leave their small New Mexico town for California, where Alice hopes to make a new life for herself as a singer. Money problems force them to settle in Arizona instead, where Alice takes a job as waitress in a small diner.
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is elevated primarily by Ellen Burstyn's Oscar-winning central performance, which gives the film its emotional authenticity and grounded humanity. The plot is a modest road-trip/reinvention drama that works well but doesn't transcend its genre premises. Scorsese's direction brings some visual energy and gritty realism, though the cinematography is workmanlike rather than exceptional. The film has a distinctive feminine perspective unusual for its era and for Scorsese, but it's not a formally radical work. The ending resolves into a fairly conventional romantic conclusion that somewhat undercuts the film's earlier feminist undertones.