Very small-scale, downbeat early film from Francis Ford Coppola, of a similar mood to Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy and The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter from around the same year, and yet it also very much feels like a more modern indie film too: it particularly put me in mind of Vincent Gallo's Buffalo 66 and The Brown Bunny.
James Caan is striking and memorable (and eerily reminiscent of Ben Affleck) as the brain-damaged college footballer given a ride by the frustrated housewife on the run from her married life, while Shirley Knight is very good at points but rather ordinary at others. The same could be said of the film itself: well-made and haunting in places, but a little slow and boring elsewhere: at moments it feels like it sums up the era in miniature - most unusually, for the time it was made, in its focus upon the callous selfishness inherent in 'finding oneself' - and at others it just meanders along like a student film with little to say.
All in all, a promising first step from Coppola, but many miles away from the films he was about to make in the seventies.
James Caan is striking and memorable (and eerily reminiscent of Ben Affleck) as the brain-damaged college footballer given a ride by the frustrated housewife on the run from her married life, while Shirley Knight is very good at points but rather ordinary at others. The same could be said of the film itself: well-made and haunting in places, but a little slow and boring elsewhere: at moments it feels like it sums up the era in miniature - most unusually, for the time it was made, in its focus upon the callous selfishness inherent in 'finding oneself' - and at others it just meanders along like a student film with little to say.
All in all, a promising first step from Coppola, but many miles away from the films he was about to make in the seventies.