Bad Timing is about a man and a woman who were never meant to be for each other, and how the whole world can see it except for them. They meet cute at a party, they exchange numbers and are soon between the sheets. In time, their differences are made obvious. But watching a Nicholas Roeg movie is never quite that simple. He was a cinematographer first and then a director, but in another life he was surely an editor. Linearity is tossed out, and as we begin to make our acquaintance with the pair and their blossoming romance, we are also coming to terms with their breakup. Roeg smashes the narrative strands, and we are left to piece them back together with Harvey Keitel's Inspector Netusil.
Roeg loves his inserts. When Alex and Milena first meet eyes there is lust in the latter and curiosity in the former, but he doesn't just direct our attention to their gazes, but to their body language; fingers fiddling with anticipation and nervousness, hands tapping and playing with suddenly irrelevant objects. This is full body flirting, not merely exchanging suggestive dialogue. With his closeups Roeg maps Milena's physical beauty as a tool to be wielded, and an artwork to be spied on. He then pushes in to designate a lingering gaze - more immediate than an insert, with its forward momentum implying violation. Roeg's curious, zooming camera has an eye for documentary, and viewing his early work you can chart its development. It was used to masterful effect in Walkabout, which was concerned with observing human behaviour in the wild, and how sooner or later they dissolve into basic animalistic urges. It was also relevant in The Man Who Fell to Earth, which observed Bowie observing other humans and their performances, playing along as best he can.
Art Garfunkel is right for the role - his temperament as an occasional actor manifests early and later on as he attempts to make sense of a relationship not bound by the usual rules. Some may point to this as amateurish, stilted acting, but the character requires a certain degree of stoicism and reservation that has been ingrained into him throughout his life, as an expectation of his class and occupation. Observe his stiff outrage in the bar scene, where he watches Milena kiss another man and then straddle him a moment later. He channels his emotions into several conflicting types of anger: he is angry that she is kissing someone else, angry that this unbridled lust is part of his obsessive attraction to her, angry that she can placate him with a simple move, and of course angry that he himself lacks that carefree impulse to match. Theresa Russell is mostly empty sensuality, but...that's the point. To try and pry something deeper and more complex from her is to fall into the same trap that Alex does, and make the same assumptions that eventually lead to the splintering of their relationship.
Roeg splinters the very structure of his film's plot, through his trademark match cuts that juxtapose image and sound. This is the most arresting of his techniques, interrupting the moans of fervid lovemaking to contrast them with the choking of Milena on the operation table. Forget foreshadowing, this is telegraphing their demise in the most direct way, peering into the future of their severed relationship undergoing resuscitation. What is most intriguing about this method is not how it chops up time and space, but rather how revealing (or not) it is towards Roeg's specific allocations of nudity and vulnerability. There are sex scenes all over the place, yet in their frenzied passion Milena remains more or less partially clothed. Contrasting that she is completely exposed on the operating table, robbed of her agency, and penetrated by metallic utensils and strangers in masks. The most explicit nudity comes when Alex's final sin is revealed: not an act of love but literally tearing her apart, violating her body. Critics at the time reviled Bad Timing for being a sick film about sick people, but did anyone notice this sly irony? Roeg deploys his most graphic images as a critique of his own character; he can tear away clothes and dignity, but get no closer to what he truly wants.
Non-linearity can be a masterstroke if done well. One of the reasons I adore Annie Hall is because the cutting rips right into Alvy Singer, exposing his hypocrisy and sharply bookending the highs and lows of his relationships. That would be replicated in 500 Days of Summer, the Annie Hall of the modern generation. Both protagonists are lovestruck fools, and who better to tell them than the film form itself? In Bad Timing Roeg deploys it as a way of wilfully obscuring the end goal of the narrative, and making a guessing game of their breakup. But ironically this jigsaw structure merely lays it all out on the table, and prolongs their agony over two hours. We know from the start she will never change, and that he might not take that so well. I refer to the final shot of Roeg's debut, Performance, where we witness a character escape in a cab - but sitting there is an entirely different person than the young man from the beginning. In Bad Timing, all the cab takes away is someone who deserves his punishment, and the fact that we have know it all along.
Roeg loves his inserts. When Alex and Milena first meet eyes there is lust in the latter and curiosity in the former, but he doesn't just direct our attention to their gazes, but to their body language; fingers fiddling with anticipation and nervousness, hands tapping and playing with suddenly irrelevant objects. This is full body flirting, not merely exchanging suggestive dialogue. With his closeups Roeg maps Milena's physical beauty as a tool to be wielded, and an artwork to be spied on. He then pushes in to designate a lingering gaze - more immediate than an insert, with its forward momentum implying violation. Roeg's curious, zooming camera has an eye for documentary, and viewing his early work you can chart its development. It was used to masterful effect in Walkabout, which was concerned with observing human behaviour in the wild, and how sooner or later they dissolve into basic animalistic urges. It was also relevant in The Man Who Fell to Earth, which observed Bowie observing other humans and their performances, playing along as best he can.
Art Garfunkel is right for the role - his temperament as an occasional actor manifests early and later on as he attempts to make sense of a relationship not bound by the usual rules. Some may point to this as amateurish, stilted acting, but the character requires a certain degree of stoicism and reservation that has been ingrained into him throughout his life, as an expectation of his class and occupation. Observe his stiff outrage in the bar scene, where he watches Milena kiss another man and then straddle him a moment later. He channels his emotions into several conflicting types of anger: he is angry that she is kissing someone else, angry that this unbridled lust is part of his obsessive attraction to her, angry that she can placate him with a simple move, and of course angry that he himself lacks that carefree impulse to match. Theresa Russell is mostly empty sensuality, but...that's the point. To try and pry something deeper and more complex from her is to fall into the same trap that Alex does, and make the same assumptions that eventually lead to the splintering of their relationship.
Roeg splinters the very structure of his film's plot, through his trademark match cuts that juxtapose image and sound. This is the most arresting of his techniques, interrupting the moans of fervid lovemaking to contrast them with the choking of Milena on the operation table. Forget foreshadowing, this is telegraphing their demise in the most direct way, peering into the future of their severed relationship undergoing resuscitation. What is most intriguing about this method is not how it chops up time and space, but rather how revealing (or not) it is towards Roeg's specific allocations of nudity and vulnerability. There are sex scenes all over the place, yet in their frenzied passion Milena remains more or less partially clothed. Contrasting that she is completely exposed on the operating table, robbed of her agency, and penetrated by metallic utensils and strangers in masks. The most explicit nudity comes when Alex's final sin is revealed: not an act of love but literally tearing her apart, violating her body. Critics at the time reviled Bad Timing for being a sick film about sick people, but did anyone notice this sly irony? Roeg deploys his most graphic images as a critique of his own character; he can tear away clothes and dignity, but get no closer to what he truly wants.
Non-linearity can be a masterstroke if done well. One of the reasons I adore Annie Hall is because the cutting rips right into Alvy Singer, exposing his hypocrisy and sharply bookending the highs and lows of his relationships. That would be replicated in 500 Days of Summer, the Annie Hall of the modern generation. Both protagonists are lovestruck fools, and who better to tell them than the film form itself? In Bad Timing Roeg deploys it as a way of wilfully obscuring the end goal of the narrative, and making a guessing game of their breakup. But ironically this jigsaw structure merely lays it all out on the table, and prolongs their agony over two hours. We know from the start she will never change, and that he might not take that so well. I refer to the final shot of Roeg's debut, Performance, where we witness a character escape in a cab - but sitting there is an entirely different person than the young man from the beginning. In Bad Timing, all the cab takes away is someone who deserves his punishment, and the fact that we have know it all along.