Performance

A film set in London that collides two worlds. Chas works for a protection racket and enjoys the job. When he turns one job into a personal matter, his own gang comes after him. He needs somewhere to hide. He rents a basement in a house in Notting Hill. The owner is Turner: once a famous musician, no longer performing, living a closed life with two women. The second half takes place in that house. Chas's hard, ruled world and Turner's loose, unbounded one run into each other. Identity, role and knowing who you are move to the centre. The form follows: the editing fragments, images overlay each other, and the line between the real and the imagined disappears. James Fox plays Chas, Mick Jagger plays Turner, with Anita Pallenberg and Michèle Breton in the household. Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg directed. After completion the studio held the film for two years; the executives who saw it did not know what to do with it and its release came late. A cult production for anyone who likes British cinema of the late 1960s and experimental storytelling. For a viewer expecting a straight narrative, the film comes apart in its second half and is deliberately hard to hold.