Breezy

Frank is in his fifties, an estate agent, divorced. His life is orderly, he has friends and he attaches himself to nobody. One morning a girl is standing outside his house: Breezy is hitchhiking, seventeen, with nowhere to go. He does not want to let her in and lets her in. She stays. A relationship begins and Frank is uneasy about it; the difference in age, what people will think, his own habits. Breezy cares about none of it. The narrative follows the man's indecision. Clint Eastwood directs. William Holden plays Frank and Kay Lenz plays Breezy. Eastwood does not appear. It is Eastwood's third work as a director and the first he is not in. It drew no interest on release and the studio gave it a limited number of cinemas. The matter it treats is fear more than the difference in age; Frank avoids attachment and the film says so directly. The California of the early seventies is inside the narrative; the difference in outlook between the two carries the cultural division of the period. Its register is unlike Eastwood's later work; there is no violence and the narrative is entirely about a relationship. Some scenes may be found uncomfortable now and the question of the age difference is not sufficiently examined. Who it is for: anyone curious about seventies American drama and early Eastwood. Who it is not for: the premise has dated, the pace is slow, and the ending is sentimental.