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1972 psychological drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A woman spends some time with her imaginary friends.

This is a less coherent version of Polanski's Repulsion, but I still really liked it. It's not necessarily what you'd expect from Robert Altmann. It's moody, taking place almost entirely in one claustrophobic location--the main character's psyche, one of those pseudo-horror movies without any real monsters or ghouls but is nonetheless frightening. The quick disintegration of York's character's mind and her loosening grip on reality is shown in a way that is horrifyingly absurd. You know you're in trouble when you're hallucinating your own doppelganger, right?

Susannah York is great as the protagonist, and she also co-wrote the whole thing. She's seemingly in every shot of the movie and effortlessly carries the story and all of its abstract layers on her shoulders. It's a good performance, mostly because it doesn't seem like a performance. There's subtlety and realism rather than flashiness or bombast, and I think the movie's better because of it.

The real star of the show is the cinematography. Sure, there are too many shots of random knickknacks, especially during the opening credits which juxtapose York with a voiceover talking about unicorns with shots of various baubles around her house. I wasn't sure how the text of a children's book she was writing fit allegorically or metaphorically with what was happening in the movie, but that might just be because I lost interest and stopped paying close attention to any of that. But back to the cinematography. There are great shots where there's a choreography with these "ghosts" and human characters. Altmann uses the space of the house well. There's also a great sex scene, fuzzied by a mirror.

John Williams did the score, and it's good stuff--lots of atonal, unidentifiable noises that sound like instruments being dropped on a studio floor. It's not the type of thing he's usually associated with, but it definitely works with what's going on visually here.

I'm not even sure I knew this movie existed. Some Robert Altmann fan I am.