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Klimt canvases behind the opening credits indicate the connection to Last Tango in Paris. From Tom Waits growling to an ambulance shrieking, Vienna, the tribulations of a relationship give it jangly form. "An observer" is how the American psychoanalyst (Art Garfunkel) defines himself, his obsession is the ribald lynx (Theresa Russell) who finally has to plead, a little less analysis and a little more love, please (cf. Rossellini's Paura). Border spaces in Freud's turf ("To be in between is to be no place at all"), she has a sad husband in Czechoslovakia (Denholm Elliott) and he lectures on voyeurism. The structural fluctuations that land her in the emergency room do not add up, the police inspector (Harvey Keitel) aims to untangle them while the couple's flashbacks seem to seep into his own mind. "Where was I?" "You were making incorrect assumptions." Nicolas Roeg in peak form, a full consciousness in images and connections, bleak and exhilarating. The bedroom in disarray is the center of the continuously shifting composition, where eccentricities of editing make for a rhomboid screen. (To "tell the truth about a lie beautifully" might be the ultimate goal.) Tickets for Fidelio are mentioned and a copy of Pinter's No Man's Land is spotted, Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie is evident throughout. The flashed twat on the building stairs, the perforated throat on the surgery table. Thanatos and Eros, the sealed-off male and the female spilling over, Garfunkel's meticulous inexpressiveness and Russell's damaged fire. "Why don't you just fuck me to death?" The horror of the fellow bent on possessing someone even if it means violating her comatose body, the comedy of the heroine who survives to stare him down on a New York sidewalk. Antonioni's Identificazione di una donna follows suit. Cinematography by Anthony Richmond. With William Hootkins, Daniel Massey, Dana Gillespie, and Eugene Lipinski.
--- Fernando F. Croce |