Alan Rudolph's 1978 film about an ex-con (Geraldine Chaplin) planning revenge on her ex-husband (Anthony Perkins). It's an eccentric, stubborn, and gripping piece, in which Rudolph executes an elegant Hitchcockian transfer of audience identification from victim to aggressor. The well-worked sound track (which includes Alberta Hunter's now famous blues score) suggests the influence of producer Robert Altman, but Rudolph has a sense of plot and characterization that is dark, tortured, and very much his own. The film isn't devoid of humor, but its overriding tones are of passion and pain: Chaplin gives a performance that's so wired and immediate it almost hurts. With Berry Berenson; photography by Tak Fujimoto.
By
Dave Kehr
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