Looking for Mr. Goodbar
Set in the mid-1970s, the film traces the sexual awakening of Theresa Dunn (Keaton), a young Irish-American teacher searching for excitement outside her ordered life. While in college, Theresa lives with her repressive Polish-Irish Catholic parents, and suffers from severe body image issues following a childhood surgery for scoliosis that left a large scar on her back. Theresa later finds out that her scoliosis is congenital and that her aunt had the same condition and committed suicide; as a result, Theresa is reluctant to have children of her own. Meanwhile, her beautiful "perfect" older sister, Katherine (Weld), has left her husband and embarked on a wild lifestyle involving multiple affairs, a secret abortion, recreational drug use, and a short-lived marriage to a Jewish man. Theresa finds first love and loses her virginity with her much older, married college professor Martin (Alan Feinstein), who ends the affair just before her graduation, leaving Theresa feeling used and lonely.
Theresa takes a job teaching deaf children, and proves to be a gifted and caring teacher. With Katherine's encouragement, she moves out of her parents' home into her own apartment in the city. She begins to go clubbing at night and picks up men for one-night stands as a way of getting excitement and sexual fulfillment without commitment, always insisting that the men leave before morning. An encounter with a street hustler named Tony (Gere) develops into them being sex buddies, and the two begin regularly meeting for increasingly rough and dangerous sex, involving a switchblade knife and drugs. At one point he gives her a Quaalude pill which causes her to oversleep and arrive very late for work the next day, angering her employer and students. Tony eventually becomes controlling and abusive, and Theresa breaks up with him. He then stalks and harasses her at the school where she works and makes threatening phone calls to her at night.
Through her job, Theresa also meets and dates an Irish-American welfare caseworker named James (Atherton). Her parents approve of the responsible James, seeing him as a potential husband for Theresa. However, they do not have sex and James wants a traditional courtship and monogamous relationship, which Theresa sees as stifling her freedom. Although James initially seems nice, over time he appears to become as controlling and disrespectful of Theresa as Tony was.
After imagining what could happen if Tony were to call the police, Theresa gathers up all the drugs in her apartment and flushes them down the toilet.
With the new year approaching, Theresa resolves to leave her clubbing and drug use behind and take control of her life. Seeking one final hookup on New Year's Eve, Theresa picks up Gary (Tom Berenger), a sexually confused ex-convict, who tells Theresa he has a pregnant wife in Florida, but has been "shacked up" with lovers (who, it is strongly implied, are gay men) since coming to the city. At Theresa's apartment, Gary finds himself unable to attain an erection. Theresa asks him to leave, which Gary misinterprets as questioning his sexuality. In a rage, Gary attacks her, beats and rapes her, then stabs her several times... killing her.
murder