PARTISAN REVIEW
119
10
far. It smells of Actor's Studio and the improvisational theater. One
pretty girl, woman, child, after another comes into the apartment of
Rip Tom turned psychiatrist, fllming them, himself (in the throes of a
nervous breakdown). A good gimmick. Rip
is
coming apart; his face
twitches with
pain,
he cries, laughs, all for the camera. The gimmick is
the
self-destruction of the film. Always in front of the camera there
is
a desperate showmanship
in
the goings-on; too truthful, they degen–
erate into method moments or jerk along with the monotony of case
studies. Everything
begins
to seem superficial, too many women, too
little scrutiny into anyone life, the living room too small for epic drama.
In the midst of these goings-on a young girl wanders in, the daugh–
ter
of some well-known writer, and a story starts to grow before our
eyes;
can Rip find happiness here even as he mocks her pseudo-tough
talk
and drug experience? Suddenly there
is
the tension between an
older and younger generation that gave
Duet for Cannibals
the spring
of its action. Unfortunately, it
is
never developed.
I look
back
at these films (Miss Sontag's excepted) and
think,
where's the writer? Where
is
someone to let them know that they lost
their way in
the
narration and missed the path to a story they might
have suprised themselves to
tell.
