Saturday, August 13, 2016

Movie review - "Your Ticket is No Longer Valid" (1981) * (warning: spoilers)

A serious Canadian drama about impotence with Richard Harris and George Peppard...That's the sort of topic that doesn't sound great in short hand, the sort of movie about which you go "might work if everything comes off." It doesn't here, but the sheer bizarreness of the film's existence give it some points.

Harris is a businessman (I got the sense the wealth was inherited) who is working on a deal. There's a fellow businessman, George Peppard, who can't get it up and talks to Harris about it A LOT - but really Peppard is a supporting player. The main story concerns Harris and his relationship with his younger girlfriend, Jennifer Dale. He has a good sex life with Dale then he starts to struggle getting it up... until he begins fantasizing about Dale having sex with a mysterious intruder who robbed him one night. Harris then becomes obsessed with the intruder so you start thinking "oh this movie is about Harris realising he's gay" but it doesn't go there either. He winds up watching a sex show with Peppard, having dealings with Jeanne Moreau, and then winding up watching the intruder and Dale having sex, then he has sex with Dale, then... I think he's killed by Moreau.

I was confused. Maybe it's clearer to understand - I admit to zoning out. Harris acts all over the shop but I wasn't clear about his character.  Good on him for trying something different, and yes while it's a film about a middle aged man with a young female lover who adores him, it's also about a man who needs images of a swarthy male gypsy to get it up, which was brave of Harris. He takes his clothes off a lot too - he liked to go for it, old Richard.

There's some support characters who pop in and out - Harris' son, his shrink, a woman who mocks Peppard's love making. The visuals aren't that pretty. And it's a fairly bad movie. But the fact it actually exists is interesting.

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