{"id":4633,"date":"2020-04-23T10:56:04","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T16:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smartalicewebdesign.com\/wordpress\/?p=4633"},"modified":"2026-02-15T19:54:52","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T01:54:52","slug":"through-the-looking-glass-menage-a-trois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartalicewebdesign.com\/wordpress\/tv-and-movies\/through-the-looking-glass-menage-a-trois\/","title":{"rendered":"Through the Looking Glass Menage a Trois"},"content":{"rendered":"

Performance<\/i>, 1968 film by Nicholas Roeg & Donald Cammell<\/h2>\n

A critique by Alice Gebura<\/p>\n

\"\"

Cecil Beaton, Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg on the set of Performance, October 1968. \u00a9The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby\u2019s<\/p><\/div>\n

Running from his mob boss and the law, sadistic thug Chas falls down a rabbit hole, Alice in Wonderland style. His exit from a seedy and gratuitously violent world into a psychedelic and gratuitously sexual one projects two fantasy experiences for the straight, adolescent male. As such Performance<\/em> is a typical film pandering to the male gender. It\u2019s a man\u2019s man-world with lots of creative torture on the streets. The two women who inhabit the wonderland mansion serve up sex fantasies in the favored prototypes blonde bombshell and pubescent nymph. Pherber, the blonde, also tends to Chas\u2019 wounds. How convenient when your sex priestess is also a mother figure, at the ready to kiss your boo-boos. The au courant counter culture embellishments that gave the film its cache can\u2019t disguise its underlying service to the hormonally-driven male persona.<\/p>\n

I suppose it\u2019s admirable that the actors were so dedicated to their \u201cdeep-method\u201d craft.\u00a0 They say James Fox spent time with real London criminals to perfect his character. Too bad the film didn\u2019t otherwise extend its authenticity. Since when does Uncle Mobster read Borges? Performance<\/em> tries to be Warhol Factory cool but the sanitized bodies, all glamour and no grit, are more in the spirit of Playboy Magazine. Also, those were not psilocybin mushrooms. The red\u00a0aminita muscaria<\/em>\u00a0will kill you within 48 hours.<\/p>\n

The duality-themed reveal when Turner and Chas reverse identities is foreshadowed with mirror shots and pretentious dialog.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only\u00a0performance\u00a0that makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieves madness.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Guffaws in the room]<\/p>\n

Lots of food for Freudian analysis, I suppose. What a nightmare for some poor schmuck psychiatrist. Performance<\/em> is a postmodernist journey into the male psyche on a quest to aggrandize its ordinary propensities.\u00a0 As a female viewer I experienced it as a singularly effective sleeping pill.<\/p>\n