Petulia (1968)

I'll tell you why so serious

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

George C. Scott and Julie Christie star in this mega-unusual film. For much of the picture, she relentlessly stalks a doctor (Scott) and much of it makes no sense until about midway through the story.I'll cut right to the chase on this one. You won't know it until later in the film, but this bizarre, artsy-fartsy mess of a film is about spousal abuse. Sadly, it's a super-important topic for a movie but it gets lost among all the pretense--all the artsiness, all the psychedelics and all the non-linear film footage that looks almost like it was edited randomly. Had the film simply told the story, it would have been so much better and so important. After all, back in 1968, folks didn't really talk about domestic violence and this movie COULD have opened up a dialog on the subject. Instead, it looks like director Richard Lester dropped some acid and kept doing so throughout the entire movie. All in all, a horribly frustrating film that I just can't recommend.

This film has an attitude, and the attitude is, "the director knows something you don't, and he's going to amuse himself by tossing riddles at an audience of common folk he's looking down his nose at." (This was typical of Lester's work. "We take acid, and we're cool. You don't, and you're stupid.")Lester tended to put style before both character and story, and that may be why his films haven't stood up for larger audiences.There actually =is= a story in this muddle, and it's not bad. Petulia herself provides the major clues near the beginning when she tells the good doctor that her mother was a prostitute and her sister was, too. In my line of work, the instant I hear revelations like that I start listening more carefully. Then we see that she's married a malignantly narcissistic sociopath. But the movie was 2/3's over before Joe Cotton's monologue in Petulia's hospital room gave the thing enough historical traction to make the foregoing and the remainder even remotely sensible. I read about a dozen other reviews here on IMDb and saw that most people see this the way most people saw "Mad Men" when it first hit cable three years ago. The vast majority of comments were about how faithful the show was to the early '60s as the viewers recalled it. But few could see what "Mad Men" was =about=, and unless one watches "Petulia" very carefully (and maybe even if they =do=), it may remain equally mysterious... if entrancing Lester has made the first three quarters of the film so hyper-artistic in the service of =his= sense of intrigue, that it will be a "long, strange trip" for most viewers. And in the world of a thousand cable TV channels, that usually means, "Where's my remote?" Orson Welles, Louis Malle, Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni had all used chronology-flipping. But in films like "Kane," as in AMC's "Mad Men," the technique works well because the characters are so compelling and the flashbacks are relatively self-evident. Here, however, the flashbacks are intentionally confusing, and the characters are way too murky until the final 20 minutes.There were people who bought into "Petulia" in the '60s because of their LSD and peyote trips. But a film about narcissistic sadomasochism among the unduly wealthy need not require a viewer's own masochism to make a point. And that point would be that "squares" like Scott's "Archie," who were socialized to common notions of "normality," will have a hard time understanding the "normality" of those outside their own mundane, middle class paradigm. I'm sorry, but I really sense a lot of Lester himself in Chamberlain's and Cotton's characters. A final word about the title character: The only people capable of forming obsessive attachments to sadistic narcissists are people who were raised to be masochistic with sadistic narcissists. And if they are as physically gifted as the beautiful, narcissistic-but-masochistic Petulia, they may become very compelling -- if frustrating -- attractions for those they seduce and mystify.I understand Petulia was meant (as a character) to be as devoid of humanity as her husband and his father. Even so, I didn't believe Petulia's "seduction" for ten seconds.

Despite the sweet title and the presence of Julie Christie, or perhaps, because of, this is not the pleasant movie one might, or might not have expected. Certainly when I first saw this upon release, having seen Lester's early b/w films, I was expecting another slightly arty avant-garde outing. But no, indeed this seems to have more than a touch of cinematographer, Nick Roeg. Think, 'Performance' with its darkness and 'Don't Look Now', with its edginess, heart stopping editing and Julie Christie and this film begins to find itself within a different context. Magnificently and correctly, of its time, this time capsule of a movie, captures exceedingly well that perturbing flip from 'swinging sixties' to murder and mayhem, and how true the moment when the 'in love' George C Scott skips across a room while the TV plays back images from the ongoing war in Vietnam. Scott is perhaps a little hard to believe as the casual lover (with good reason by all accounts!), Chamberlain, disturbingly believable and Christie, herself flipping from hip and happy to neurotic and self destructive. Very fine move, just not a very happy ride.

There's a reason this "undiscovered gem" remains undiscovered: It's lousy. On just about all counts. Considering the talent involved, it's surprising how bad it is. How can a Richard Lester film be so boring? The characters are completely unsympathetic and underdeveloped. The scene between George C. Scott and Shirley Knight is designed to reveal the essence of their failed relationship, but it's so shallow, all I could focus on was who's gonna clean up the food he threw at her? Richard Chamberlain's portrayal of an inattentive, abusive husband is totally unconvincing, though the real fault is in the writing. And Julie Christie, looking beautiful in her prime, has to be referred to by everyone as a "kook" several times, otherwise we might not get it. Wasted too, are the amazing San Francisco locations. Nicholas Roeg had every opportunity to showcase this picturesque city, but instead fills the frame with ugly, dated interiors. This humorless look at troubled losers never gets off the ground.