Remarkable film, which at one stage probably seemed self indulgent and wanky - and there are probably still audiences who see it like that - but for my money at least has aged remarkably well. It's combination of fame, gangsters, androgyny, sex, thriller and music is intoxication.
For those such as myself only really familiar with James Fox playing frightfully decent, weak members of the upper class, his performance here as the gangster is remarkable: tough, vicious, kinky (he likes rough stuff), snobby, homophobic, ruthless, and not as smart as he thinks he is. The plot has him get in trouble at work, forcing him to go on the run - it takes 30 minutes for him to arrive at the house, but it's gripping stuff, full of interesting direction (flash cuts, a victim of Fox's covering his face with a sheet before he's shot, etc). He ranks up there with Richard Burton in Villain and Michael Caine in Get Carter.
At the house there are two excellent performances from Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg. We all know now that Jagger is a cricket-loving, highly fertile member of the establishment but in the late 60s he did seem at times to be a bit satanic and strange (look at the Stones in Gimme Shelter) and that's played off well here. He's obviously inexperienced but he does have presence which us used well.
Pallenberg seems to come straight out of a witches coven in the Middle Ages - beautiful, sexy, charismatic as hell. She's extremely effective and really hot. No wonder so many people flipped over her.
This isn't a perfect film. The extended musical video sequence with Jagger singing feels as though it jars, and a lot of the stuff in the house is repeating the same story beat - it's as though the movie needed a subplot, like the one Wendy Craig provided in The Servant, i.e. a dash of the outside world. But its imaginative and still very different. Would make a great double bill with The Servant.
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