Subtitles:

French, none

Extras:

• Bande-Announce 2011 (1:17)

The debut of writer and director Jerry Schatzberg, this cinema verite drama won accolades for the Golden Globe-nominated... performance of lead actress Faye Dunaway. Dunaway stars as Lou Andreas Sand, a former fashion model who has retreated to her seaside cottage and is being interviewed by Aaron Reinhardt (Barry Primus), a photographer and filmmaker who helped make her famous and with whom she was once involved. Aaron wants to make a movie about Lou's rise from rags to riches but as Lou recalls it, her seemingly glamorous existence was anything but a Horatio Alger tale. In an addled fog, Lou struggles to recite a shocking litany of casual sex and rape, drug and alcohol abuse, and the anger of her lesbian mentor Paula Galba (Viveca Lindfors) when her romance with wealthy boyfriend Mark (Roy Scheider) nearly led to marriage. Her career deteriorating, Lou even attempted suicide. A former fashion photographer himself, Schatzberg was an apt choice for director of this melodramatic portrait of the industry's ugly underbelly.

[...]

Watching movies about drug addiction can teach you a thing or two about it, but it is still best to consult with a professional, especially when you are afflicted with the condition yourself.

***

Very much a film of its period (1970), when Alain Resnais' subjective and lyrical editing patterns were at the height of their influence, this is the first feature of former fashion photographer Jerry Schatzberg. It deals with the memories and imaginings of a fashion model (Faye Dunaway) who's attempting to recover from a nervous breakdown in a beach cottage, and shares the fragmented, mosaic form as well as some of the melancholia of the 1968 Petulia—though not much of its saving humor. I didn't warm to this film, but given the quality of some of Schatzberg's subsequent work, especially Scarecrow and Reunion, and the claims made for this picture by Michel Ciment, Schatzberg's biggest champion, it may deserve a second look. The script is by Five Easy Pieces's Adrien Joyce, writing under the pseudonym Carol Eastman; the secondary cast includes Barry Primus, Viveca Lindfors, Barry Morse, and Roy Scheider.

Gary Tooze

February 26th, 2012