Petulia

Director: Richard Lester
Screenwriters: John Haase, Lawrence B. Marcus

Institute History

  • 1990 Sundance Film Festival

Description

With Petulia, Lester shifts from swinging London to counterculture San Francisco. It's a clever, strange film, shot by Nick Roeg, very much of its own time (with music by The Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company), but there's enough seriousness in Lester's skittish comic techniques and social observations to mark it as a film not to be missed.

At its core Petulia is an "odd couple" romance between a rich, married and very-scattered Petulia (Julie Christie) and a tired, divorced surgeon, Archie (George C. Scott). Their relationship poses a challenge. Will Archie give in to the poetic idyll that Petulia represents? Will Petulia settle for the risks of Archie's normalcy? Always they're surrounded by an odd assortment of middle-class Californians-wives, husbands, parents, friends and kids-all grooving into and out of the film with Lester's usual pace and economy.

Tuesday, January 23, 10:30 p.m.
Holiday Village Cinema I

Sunday, January 28, 2:00 p.m.
Prospector Square Theatre

— Tony Safford

Screening Details

Credits

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