A way out film for the in-crowd, circa 1968 in swinging London. It’s day-glo, plastic fantastic, flower-powered and frilly around the collar and cuffs. It offers fantasy sequences and trippy party scenes for which first-time feature director Joe Massot turns up George Harrison’s terrific psychedelic artifact music score (it’s exactly the mix of sitars and breezy grooves that you’d expect from him during this period).
What brings it down to Earth is that all of this madness is seen through the eyes of the outsider main character, a lonely fiftysomething science professor played by Irish stage and screen veteran Jack McGowran. He discovers a hole in the wall of his flat through which he can spy on his sexy young Vogue model neighbor Jane Birkin. She lounges nude by herself, makes love to her mop-topped man, poses for strange photos and throws LSD parties, each moment bathed in a variety of loud color schemes. Every time that our professor peaks through the wall, there’s a new Hipgnosis album cover happening on the other side. He becomes obsessed, but it’s all played for droll comedy. The narrative is simple and clear, with classic highs, lows and laughs. It’s not the indulgent art school mess that this film’s elusiveness lead many of us to imagine that it was (on other hand, I did view Massot’s tight seventy-four minute “Director’s Cut”, which is almost twenty minutes shorter than the original release, which I haven’t seen).
It’s an enjoyable film that I’d recommend to most anyone who’s looking for an offbeat comedy, but perhaps its great value is as a time capsule piece of the fashions of its era. The apartments here are works of art. Jane Birkin’s place is a wildly painted stained-glass cathedral of 1968 hipness. Even stodgy old McGowarn’s home looks like a dreamy castle library chamber.
If this isn’t a brain-ful, it’s at least at eyeful. In movies, that’s all you need.