Though not without its comic and surreal moments, director Richard Lester conjures up possibly his most serious and reflective film, following flighty socialite Petulia (Julie Christie), emotionally abused by her husband, David (Richard Chamberlain), who falls in love with older divorced doctor, Archie (George C. Scott), against the chaotic background of San Francisco’s flower power generation in full bloom. Things seem to be falling apart for both Petulia and Archie in their personal lives and, at times, they don’t seem to mix together any better than oil and water. But gradually real evidence materializes, for better or worse, that they are both very much on the same emotional wavelength. Scored once again by the incomparable John Barry, Petulia also features live footage of The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company in their prime. With Shirley Knight as Archie’s ex-wife and Joseph Cotten as Petulia’s angry, controlling father.
“Petulia is a splendid affair, more adventurous than Lester’s previous pictures… It verges on the elegiac…In its structure of flashbacks/forwards and deep cynicism about marriage, it resides on some kind of terrific trajectory together with other tailspins like Two For the Road and Bad Timing, the latter which happens to have been directed by Nicholas Roeg, the cinematographer of Petulia.” – Nathan Gielgud, New York Film Review
“Petulia has its own unique shape, similar to John Boorman’s Point Blank from the previous year, in that its protagonists occupy the clean, unblemished center of a trippy, unstable, swirling background… Petulia is a truly unique film.” – Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
