Here's an unusual thing - a British melodrama made by an American comedy director in the style of fashionable European art-house cinema. Although the image of a mannequin-pretty woman waiting for a bus with a huge tuba seems Felliniesque, the main influences appear to be Antonioni and Resnais. Like the former, 'Petulia' is the story of failed relationships in a sterile, modern environment. Phrases like 'alienation' come readily to mind.
George C. Scott plays the sort of character you can imagine Marcello Mastroianni acting like a glove, a successful professional (here, a doctor) whose personal life is a mess, not through economic circumstances or personal antipathy, but something vaguer, paralysis, passivity. Offered a chance of escape or excitement, he quickly doubts himself out of it. His personal sterility is mirrored in his environment, captured in images of chilly, symmetrical beauty, huge, dwarfing, faceless, monolithic buildings, walls, rooms, motorways, amusement parks, hospitals, constructions, obviously built by people, but seeped of all soul, marks of humanity or culture; frightening and futuristic.
To further compound this hero's drifting aimlessness, he can't even settle into his own story, which is repeatedly broken up, by strange, choppy editing between time and space, between the uncertain status of many scenes (is this a dream? memory? real? flashforward? imagining? some one else's point of view?) - this is the Resnais part; by the camerawork that makes him shrink in his surroundings; by jokey gimmicks, such as the outing with his sons in a deserted construction; by the enigmatic symbolism that doesn't yield any immediate sense; by the ellipses in narrative so that we, with the hero, don't always know what's going on.
Any talk of facts of the plot can only be provisional. Scott is an eminent surgeon, about to be divorced, with two kids he sees a couple of hours a week. At a fundraiser, he is hit on by Petulia (Julie Christie), a self-styled kook, alternately jaunty and melancholy, whose husband seems to be abusive, and whose father-in-law puts a lot of money into the hospital. She offers and withdraws sexual favours to Scott, and follows him everywhere, doing silly things like robbing tubas. She has a past of her own, of course - on a trip to Tijuana, a Mexican urchin hitched a ride; her husband throws him out, and he is accidentally run over. Scott is his surgeon.
Such a summary suggests that the film is all about connection - the main characters are somehow inextricably linked. This is strengthened by Lester's style, which cuts between characters in the middle of scenes, seeming to tie them together even when they are apart. But there is one scene that seems to summarise the film's attitude to connection, when Petulia's husband, with Petulia in the same room, phones Scott, but doesn't talk to him - Scott talks into emptiness, to himself. Petulia doesn't know what's going on. Like the telephone, the film is complex apparatus of connection, of potential communication, but nobody is saying anything to each other.
This is a strange film. The wholesale dumping of one culture's codes onto another is obviously contrived, and 'Petulia' often feels like it hasn't absorbed it's masters' lessons. Richard Lester is one of my favourite directors, and a masterpiece like 'The Knack' reveals a surer grasp of European ideas. But nobody else was making daring, difficult films like this - 'Bonnie and Clyde', for all its trickery, is a very accessible, conventional film. It is no accident that both Nicolas Roeg (who photographed it) and Steven Soderbergh found rich inspiration here. 'Petulia' is quite remarkable.
George C. Scott plays the sort of character you can imagine Marcello Mastroianni acting like a glove, a successful professional (here, a doctor) whose personal life is a mess, not through economic circumstances or personal antipathy, but something vaguer, paralysis, passivity. Offered a chance of escape or excitement, he quickly doubts himself out of it. His personal sterility is mirrored in his environment, captured in images of chilly, symmetrical beauty, huge, dwarfing, faceless, monolithic buildings, walls, rooms, motorways, amusement parks, hospitals, constructions, obviously built by people, but seeped of all soul, marks of humanity or culture; frightening and futuristic.
To further compound this hero's drifting aimlessness, he can't even settle into his own story, which is repeatedly broken up, by strange, choppy editing between time and space, between the uncertain status of many scenes (is this a dream? memory? real? flashforward? imagining? some one else's point of view?) - this is the Resnais part; by the camerawork that makes him shrink in his surroundings; by jokey gimmicks, such as the outing with his sons in a deserted construction; by the enigmatic symbolism that doesn't yield any immediate sense; by the ellipses in narrative so that we, with the hero, don't always know what's going on.
Any talk of facts of the plot can only be provisional. Scott is an eminent surgeon, about to be divorced, with two kids he sees a couple of hours a week. At a fundraiser, he is hit on by Petulia (Julie Christie), a self-styled kook, alternately jaunty and melancholy, whose husband seems to be abusive, and whose father-in-law puts a lot of money into the hospital. She offers and withdraws sexual favours to Scott, and follows him everywhere, doing silly things like robbing tubas. She has a past of her own, of course - on a trip to Tijuana, a Mexican urchin hitched a ride; her husband throws him out, and he is accidentally run over. Scott is his surgeon.
Such a summary suggests that the film is all about connection - the main characters are somehow inextricably linked. This is strengthened by Lester's style, which cuts between characters in the middle of scenes, seeming to tie them together even when they are apart. But there is one scene that seems to summarise the film's attitude to connection, when Petulia's husband, with Petulia in the same room, phones Scott, but doesn't talk to him - Scott talks into emptiness, to himself. Petulia doesn't know what's going on. Like the telephone, the film is complex apparatus of connection, of potential communication, but nobody is saying anything to each other.
This is a strange film. The wholesale dumping of one culture's codes onto another is obviously contrived, and 'Petulia' often feels like it hasn't absorbed it's masters' lessons. Richard Lester is one of my favourite directors, and a masterpiece like 'The Knack' reveals a surer grasp of European ideas. But nobody else was making daring, difficult films like this - 'Bonnie and Clyde', for all its trickery, is a very accessible, conventional film. It is no accident that both Nicolas Roeg (who photographed it) and Steven Soderbergh found rich inspiration here. 'Petulia' is quite remarkable.