Nicolas Roeg (1928-2018)

[Forrest Taft]

It seems Glastonbury Fayre came out on blu-ray only a few weeks ago.

I've seen very little of his work after Insignificance, but it seems like most of it is out on DVD in Europe. I found inexpensive Italian and Spanish releases of Track 29, Full Body Massage, Two Deaths and Castaway from various Amazons, and Sweet Bird of Youth is streaming on Prime. So I'll be catching up on a lot of unseen Roeg's in the near future. Cold Heaven seems to be the only one without any release.

[Big Ben]

For my fellow Americans Cold Heaven is available to rent or buy digitally on Amazon US for 4.99 or 9.99 respectively.

I'm assuming you haven't seen Puffball, which seemed to have been rather too balls-out for a great many people. (I was incredibly lucky with that film, since I'm married to a midwife who's heavily into paganism, and Roeg could have been aiming it precisely at her.)

No I haven't. I never bothered seeking it out some years ago because I couldn't find a copy anywhere but reading this now you've reignited my interest.

[colinr0380]

Puffball is also based on a novel by Fay Weldon, who is most famous for The Life and Loves of A She-Devil, adapted into a BBC TV series and later made into the Susan Seidelman film starring Roseanne and Meryl Steep. Without having seen Puffball as yet, I wonder whether it might be worth seeing it more for those aspects as much as the Roeg ones.

(I think the UK/US versions of that She-Devil adaptation kind of have similar difficult trans-Atlantic translation issues to the those that faced Track 29!)

[MichaelB]

I’d actually read the novel a couple of decades before I was assigned the film to review, which is how I know that some of the more extreme gynaecological detail was absolutely true to Weldon and not at all the by-product of Roeg trying to shock people, as some rather knee-jerkily assumed.

[Big Ben]

I’d actually read the novel a couple of decades before I was assigned the film to review, which is how I know that some of the more extreme gynaecological detail was absolutely true to Weldon and not at all the by-product of Roeg trying to shock people, as some rather knee-jerkily assumed.

Reading a content description of it the film nothing in it appears to be out of place content wise for a Roeg film. Films like The Man Who Fell to Earth certainly aren't shy when it comes to showing every bit of the performer. Am I correct in the assumption that his forthrightness didn't go over as well in 2007 as it did in 1976?

[colinr0380]

Sheila O'Malley's tribute to Roeg in Film Comment.

Something that piece did emphasise to me though was the way that the 'final act' in Bad Timing interestingly sort of overwhelms the truly upsetting turning point moment of the film, which is that mid-point moment of the argument on the stairwell where during a fight and as Alex is walking out on Milena's character, she angrily exposes herself and asks him "is this what you want? Do it then!". That is the moment that kind of destroys the relationship as Alex should have just continued walking but he returns and has sex with her in her most vulnerable state, confirming her suspicions about him. That is what prompts the final spiral of the film, as Milena falls deeper into depression and alcoholism (she tested him and found him not just wanting but actively unable to reject sex when offered, even mockingly, and hypocritical in his own behaviours) whilst Alex closes off even more, and even blames Milena for the provocation, as if upset that he 'took the bait'. In a sense that final, beyond the pale act of taking advantage of someone when they are unconscious and possibly about to die is just a restatement (re-staging) of that earlier act. The couple are so broken by that point they can only have sex without being mentally present together.

Watching Bad Timing again, I really love that early separation scene between Russell and Denholm Elliott. That's a more successfully ending, or at least less brutally upsetting, end to a relationship I suppose! And it is probably key that that river separating two masses of land reappears as the final image of the film. (In some ways Bad Timing and Possession would make a good, if inadvisable due to how mentally harrowing it would be, Cold War relationship breakdown double bill!)

[colinr0380]

And here's a wonderful 2015 piece interviewing Bernard Rose on Roeg's films from the BFI site