Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

jarrodmcdonald-1 Some reviewers have complained that PETULIA is a bit of a downer-- that it is a little too depressing to watch. But this movie is not supposed to make you feel good...it's supposed to make you think about life and relationships. Lead actress Julie Christie is superb as always and so is her costar, George C. Scott. In a supporting role, Richard Chamberlain adds an interesting element to the proceedings, as does Joseph Cotten in an extended cameo as his father. The film's jagged time line keeps its viewer on tenterhooks, wondering where Julie Christie's character will end up in this story about post-traumatic stress and recovery. Great, provocative cinema.

brefane A very striking film from director Richard Lester that combines Cassevettes' realism, Kubrick's clinical detachment, and Resnais' fragmented film style. Set against a San Francisco that seems inspired by Felini as well as Antonnioni's BlowUp, Petulia, released the same year as Cassavettes' Faces and Kubrick's 2001, features a terrific performance from George C. Scott whose wry line readings provide some of the best moments in the film. The doctor he plays in Petulia is a younger version of the one he played in The Hospital(71), and Scott's straightforward performance garners sympathy while Christie's Petulia is an annoying kook, or worse, from the get go, and the way she suddenly co-ops the doctor's life is alarming. The only time I was on her side was when she told Wilma to "Get stuffed!". She's more disturbing than charming, and it's hard to believe that the doctor wouldn't be fleeing from her or getting a restraining order. And why Petulia married the privileged, sadistic, homosexual pederast in the first place is really no more explained than she is. Nonetheless, Richard Chamberlain is effectively cast as the husband, Nicolas Roeg's cinematography creates some spectacular imagery, Scott never looked better, Christie when not sabotaged by hairdo and make up is lovely, John Barry's score is very effective, and though some of the editing is pointlessly distracting, it is dazzling, and the background with jaded hippies, giddy nuns, automated hotels, 24 hour supermarkets... is arguably more interesting than the foreground with Petulia & Co. Cinematographer Roeg used subliminal imagery in his films Performance(70) and Walkabout(71) as did John Boorman in Point Blank(67) which like Petulia also used Alcatraz as a location.

BrentCarleton Julie Christie parades her proletariat pout through 2 hours of psychedelic pretensions, all of which are seemingly supposed to suggest great profundity and hidden meaning--but don't be fooled--this is an empty parcel wrapped in glittering paper, with a core as resoundingly vacuous as the society it attempts to depict.The story, (such as it is) concerns a chic young woman (Miss Christie as "Petulia") who picks up children and middle aged men with casual indifference to convention, because she's "kooky" (recall that our anti-heroine here inherits this voguish characteristic from her cinematic sisters in "Georgy Girl," "Darling" and anything with Sandy Duncan). The reason for this, to which the story eventually arrives, but which it anticipates with frequent visual flashbacks, lies in an unhappy marriage with wealthy pretty boy Richard Chamberlin.In this instance, Petulia's latest adult male conquest is a recently divorced physician, (George C. Scott) with whom she commits adultery, between kooky capers (installing a greenhouse in a residential urban apartment, shopping out the store in an all night grocery etc.) and pronouncements such as "I think I've just found the cure for cancer".Amid the kookiness, and in order to assure us that this is all to be taken in deadly earnest, the story includes an incident in which Petulia is hospitalized after sustaining multiple lacerations in Mr. Scott's apartment. This sequence replete with ambulance runs, and much blood is designed to arouse sympathy for any in the audience who haven't yet warmed to our anti-heroine, who also turns out to be expecting a baby.Mr. Scott wears an expression throughout the film suggesting the worst case of indigestion in history, (and by the way it's the only expression he wears) and one wonders if his dissatisfaction is with the script or the character.In any case, he's unsympathetic, not the least of which is because his ex-wife is portrayed by the exquisitely lovely Shirley Knight of the golden blonde hair and guileless cornflower blue eyes. Her performance, so dead on target, saves the film, in at least those sequences in which she appears.Along the way, every visual cliché in the book is thrown in at some point including protesting hippies, daisy covered vans, strobe lit discotheques, and rock bands. The faddish choppy editing through which these scenes appear fleetingly is about as subtle as a sledge hammer.If the point of this cinematic charade is that modern society is filled with poseurs, then "Darling" from three years earlier made the same point much better. In this case, "Petulia" is the poseur par excellence.

ags123 There's a reason this "undiscovered gem" remains undiscovered: It's lousy. On just about all counts. Considering the talent involved, it's surprising how bad it is. How can a Richard Lester film be so boring? The characters are completely unsympathetic and underdeveloped. The scene between George C. Scott and Shirley Knight is designed to reveal the essence of their failed relationship, but it's so shallow, all I could focus on was who's gonna clean up the food he threw at her? Richard Chamberlain's portrayal of an inattentive, abusive husband is totally unconvincing, though the real fault is in the writing. And Julie Christie, looking beautiful in her prime, has to be referred to by everyone as a "kook" several times, otherwise we might not get it. Wasted too, are the amazing San Francisco locations. Nicholas Roeg had every opportunity to showcase this picturesque city, but instead fills the frame with ugly, dated interiors. This humorless look at troubled losers never gets off the ground.