Petulia

A film set in San Francisco at the end of the 1960s. Archie is a surgeon. He has just divorced, lives alone in his own flat, and has not yet unpacked his boxes. He meets a woman at a charity ball. Petulia is married; she has come with her husband and tells Archie directly that she wants an affair with him. She behaves strangely. She brings a tuba to a hotel room, disappears, comes back days later, and explains nothing. From there the film proceeds in fragments. The scenes are not chronological; the narrative keeps jumping forward and back and some images appear for a second and are gone. Something happens at Petulia's house. Her husband David hits her, and it appears in one part of the film as a single cut. Archie finds out. He sees her at the hospital and watches how the family covers it. A Mexican boy is in the line as well. Petulia found him somewhere and took him into her life; the narrative ties that relationship to a story of guilt too. What the narrative is interested in is not love but a period: with the Vietnam war going on, the news running in the papers and a new culture forming in the city, the film describes how a wealthy circle feels nothing. The editing is deliberately scattered. The director cuts the narrative with advertising and news images. Nicolas Roeg was the cinematographer, and this fragmented structure is very close to his own later films. The bands playing in the city are real. Names from the San Francisco scene of the period perform inside the film. Julie Christie, George C. Scott, Richard Chamberlain and Shirley Knight are in the cast. Richard Lester directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes the formal experiments of the late 1960s. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a straight narrative; for the first half hour the film does not even make clear who is who.