Briefly, if inexplicably in critical fashion after vaguely literary/vaguely European-in-style projects (DAVID AND LISA/’62; THE SWIMMER/’68), Frank Perry was ‘found out’ (Hollywood slang for commercial disappointment), reduced to tv gigs & embarrassments like MOMMIE DEAREST/’85. This prestige indie, from high literary sources Joan Didion (novel) & husband John Gregory Dunne (screenplay) came between the highs & the lows. Still, it manages to display most of the Perry faults, appropriating current (or just past current) filmmaking styles (here Cali New Wave montage) with a preternatural ability to find just the wrong shot to listlessly follow action (or inaction). Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins are quite good under the circumstances as prematurely washed-up/mentally unstable actress and gay best pal who’s producing her ex-husband’s low-budget movie. (Perkins actually able to pull off that early ‘70s dress/grooming style.) Trying to get back in the swing of things with old associates, Weld can’t quite connect with the rhythm of pleasantly purposeless lives and the accompanying hedonism all around her. Even contact with her own rarely seen daughter can’t get her to the metaphorical freeway off-ramp marked Tragic Events, the one she merges onto with a little help from booze, drugs, movies, abortion* and her friends.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *With abortion legal in California from 1967, and Weld’s character somewhere between 6 & 8 weeks pregnant, why the shady illegal provider?
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: How to explain the gulf between the Didion/Dunne literary rep and their movie credits? PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK’71 and this one just get by (more as failed experiments), but 1976's A STAR IS BORN; TRUE CONFESSIONS/’81 and UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL/’96 are the sort of thing you leave off your CV. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/06/true-confessions-1981.html
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