The Sterile Cuckoo

An American film set around a college. Pookie is an odd girl. She talks constantly, comments on everyone and gives nicknames to the people around her. On a bus she meets a young man named Jerry and starts talking to him; he has to answer. The two are at different colleges. Pookie writes letters, telephones and visits; Jerry finds it strange at first and then gets used to it. The relationship begins. For a while it goes well. Then Pookie's loneliness becomes plain. She has no friends, her tie to her family is weak and she wants all of Jerry's time. When he sees his own friends there is a crisis. Where the film goes is that dependence. Pookie tries to hold the relationship up alone and every move pushes the other side a little further away. The central scene is a long telephone conversation, taken in one shot, which tells the whole state of the character on its own. Liza Minnelli plays Pookie and Wendell Burton plays Jerry. Minnelli was nominated for an Academy Award for the part. Alan J. Pakula directed; it is his first film as director, having worked as a producer before. The film's song was played for a long time and was nominated for an award. A strong production for anyone who likes American cinema of the late 1960s and character drama. For a viewer expecting a romance, the film takes the relationship somewhere increasingly hard.