Frances lives a
life of lonely luxury surrounded by geriatrics but soon invites mischief and
mystery into her flat existence. Director Robert Altman’s contemporaneous tale
concerns the Flower Power generation and the status quo meeting somewhere in
the wasteland of middle-age and rearranges perceptions with piercing insight.
Frances lives
alone but is surrounded by aging friends and house servants, more friends of
her deceased parents than her own. One day she sees a young man sitting on a
park bench in the rain and invites him in. He remains shy and speechless,
expressing understanding only with his eyes. This boy (who remains nameless
throughout the film) is like an empty vessel filled with Frances’ words. She
begins to care for this seemingly homeless young man and he doesn’t resist…even
when locked in his room. The first act is a bizarre relationship of mother and
son but soon becomes “incestuous”. The second act reveals that this young man
has his own life after all when he sneaks out of the window and goes home. He
crashes at his sister’s place and smokes pot and partakes of some hash brownies
while telling her of this strange pickup. He decides to revisit Frances and
resumes the part of mysterious boy but this soon devolves into a bloodletting
of repressed sexuality where Frances becomes the one who penetrates…another
woman.
Director Robert
Altman and his legendary DP Laszlo Kovacks tell a simple story in wonderful
detail using oblique lighting effects and slow pan zooms. Often, the camera
focuses upon a single point of light and it becomes a brilliant lens flare,
growing fainter and changing shape as focus is pulled towards the person
speaking. This gives the film an ethereal patina like a slow moving dreamscape
as Frances’ begins to come apart at the seams. Altman even foreshadows her
decline with a child’s doll, an asexual symbol that falls apart when finally
touched. The young man’s sister, after inviting herself to the apartment when
Frances is out shopping, plays at sexual attraction with her brother. This
heightens the metaphor of incest and domination by the female as she’s the one
playing temptress. The final act leads to imprisonment and Frances hiring a
prostitute to sleep with her prisoner. Sylvia, the hooker, even jokes that
Frances must be a pervert and enjoys voyeurism but she has got it all wrong.
Frances is empowered by her suppressed desire and enters the room with her own phallic
symbol. It’s Sylvia who is on the receiving end as the film ends with Frances
in total control, pinning the young man to the wall with her kisses.
Altman’s style is
fully formed in this, one of his earlier films before MASH. He shoots through
windows, first focusing on the foreground then slowly zooming in on his
subject. In one well-choreographed scene, Frances goes to a gynecologist and
Altman shoots the action in one continuous take, tracking from outside and
looking through multiple windows. The women in the waiting room are talking
about birth control and one lady is surprised that not all men have the same
size penis. It’s an important (and a bit funny) detail because it leads us to
consider that Frances is even more naïve than this lady. A few scenes later
while she is turning down an advance from an elder friend, her mind goes back
to the exam. The doctor’s voice is a gentle hum that supersedes the suitor’s.
Frances has a look of secret enjoyment while the doctor performs his exam and
one begins to wonder if this is the first time a man has ever touched her at
all! She later spills her innermost secrets about this elderly man and how she
hates his veneer of aging pomposity, and how she needs him (the boy) to make
love to her. But she only holds counsel with childhood toys.
Final Grade: (B+)
