Linda is a bored housewife whose husband shows no interest in her. She wants a child and is haunted by the memory of the baby she was forced to give up from a teenage pregnancy. But when a strange young man named Martin suddenly appears, claiming to be her long lost son, is he who he seems to be, or is she starting to lose her mind ?
I really like movies about the strangeness of the mother-son relationship (Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate) and this, from the pen of the brilliantly perverse Dennis Potter, is possibly the strangest. Its clever touch is in never explaining the Oldman character; he probably only exists in Russell's head, but equally he might be real, or he might be just a calculating psychopath (Potter used the same idea in Brimstone And Treacle, where the character is also called Martin). But as a metaphor for both Oedipal repression and the desire not to grow up (slyly mirrored in Lloyd's obsession with toy trains), he is endlessly fascinating and Oldman's histrionic performance is sensational. Russell too is amazing, in an impossible part, playing the whole movie with her eyebrows lowered quizzically, and the sexual tension between her and Oldman is incredible. Purists may claim their ages are wrong - he's too old and she's too young - but they are perfect casting, and Lloyd and Bernhard provide great wacky support, almost as if they are in a separate movie of their own. I love all the witty maternal references in this movie; it starts with John Lennon's song Mother (he was raised mostly by an aunt), the trucker's tattoos, at one point Oldman mashes a knife into an egg and at another he plays the old traditional song M-O-T-H-E-R on the piano, the clips from the erotically-charged Cape Fear on TV, etc. Beautifully shot by Alex Thomson throughout, with all sorts of clever visual tricks to keep us guessing at the characters' mental states. Produced by Rick McCallum (of Star Wars fame), funded by George Harrison's Handmade Films and shot at the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group studios in North Carolina. This is a great primal scream of a movie, in equal parts bamboozling, funny and thought-provoking, with one-of-a-kind performances; a film for all mothers and sons to see, although probably best not together. This was the fourth of Roeg's six intriguing movies with his former wife Russell, and for my money their best one together (although they both made better films separately).
I really like movies about the strangeness of the mother-son relationship (Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate) and this, from the pen of the brilliantly perverse Dennis Potter, is possibly the strangest. Its clever touch is in never explaining the Oldman character; he probably only exists in Russell's head, but equally he might be real, or he might be just a calculating psychopath (Potter used the same idea in Brimstone And Treacle, where the character is also called Martin). But as a metaphor for both Oedipal repression and the desire not to grow up (slyly mirrored in Lloyd's obsession with toy trains), he is endlessly fascinating and Oldman's histrionic performance is sensational. Russell too is amazing, in an impossible part, playing the whole movie with her eyebrows lowered quizzically, and the sexual tension between her and Oldman is incredible. Purists may claim their ages are wrong - he's too old and she's too young - but they are perfect casting, and Lloyd and Bernhard provide great wacky support, almost as if they are in a separate movie of their own. I love all the witty maternal references in this movie; it starts with John Lennon's song Mother (he was raised mostly by an aunt), the trucker's tattoos, at one point Oldman mashes a knife into an egg and at another he plays the old traditional song M-O-T-H-E-R on the piano, the clips from the erotically-charged Cape Fear on TV, etc. Beautifully shot by Alex Thomson throughout, with all sorts of clever visual tricks to keep us guessing at the characters' mental states. Produced by Rick McCallum (of Star Wars fame), funded by George Harrison's Handmade Films and shot at the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group studios in North Carolina. This is a great primal scream of a movie, in equal parts bamboozling, funny and thought-provoking, with one-of-a-kind performances; a film for all mothers and sons to see, although probably best not together. This was the fourth of Roeg's six intriguing movies with his former wife Russell, and for my money their best one together (although they both made better films separately).