How far will a woman go? How far will a 32 year-old spinster go to possess a strange, 19 year-old boy?
1969-06-08
$0.5M
113 min
Frances Austen, a young, wealthy spinster, invites a mute teenager into her apartment after finding him freezing in the park next to where she lives. Despite her best efforts, their lack of communication only increases her sense of loneliness, as her possessiveness spirals into frightening new realms.
"Frances Austen" (Sandy Dennis) is having a genteel lunch party with her friends when she spots a young man sitting on a park bench outside amidst an heavy rainstorm. Her guests all leave and she decides to fetch him in to feed, water and dry him off. He (Michael Burns) understands her ok, but he doesn't ever speak as she proceeds to chat (pretty relentlessly) to him before offering him a bed for the night. It isn't long before she is completely obsessed by the attractive young man and he becomes more of a lodger, though with increasingly less freedom to leave her luxurious apartment. When she decides that she might want to look after his sexual needs too, things begin to come to an head - and (a feintly ridiculous) tragedy ensues. The first eighty minutes or so of this are quite intriguing. We see a woman - of ostensibly upstanding character - become increasingly hung up on the young Adonis she has taken under her wing, whilst we also see aspects of the young man's true character that remain unknown to her for much of the film. Robert Altman cleverly and delicately touches on the aspects of infatuation and delusion of "Frances" whilst also eliciting a degree of sympathy for her as we discover that the boy is not the only one being used, here. Burns spends a lot of his time scantily clad, but in quite an effectively non-provocative, almost boyish fashion - and Dennis is on good form as a woman who has lived her life in a gilded cage from which she now craves escape. I did not really like the ending. It seemed a bit lazy and sensational for me. Not that I did really know how it should conclude, or even if it needed a definite denouement at all, but somehow I was rather disappointed with what we were offered..This is still an interesting character study that any fly on the wall might enjoy. I did.
