Cinema Canada (Jun 1978)

FILM REVIEWS Richard Loncraine’s FULL CIRCLE d. Richard Loncraine, sc. Dave Humphries, ph. Peter Hannan, ph. op. Terry Permane, still. Anthony Bliss, ed. Catherine Lane, sup. ed. Ron Wisman, sd. Jim Hopkins, sd. ed. Tony Jackson, a.d. Brian Morris, set dec. Chris Burke, cost. Shuna Harwood, |.p. Mia Farrow, Keir Dullea, Tom Conti, Jill Bennett, Robin Gammell, Cathleen Nesbitt, Anna Wing, Pauline Jameson, Peter Sallis, Sophie Ward, Samantha Gates, exec. p. Julian Melzack, p. Peter Fetterman, Alfred Pariser, p. sup. Hugh Harlow, p. manager. Peter Bennett, Tony Thatcher, p.c. Fetter Productions (London), Classic Film Industries (Montreal) 1976 col. 35mm. running time 108 min., dist. Astral. Within the last year or so, the Canadian film industry has made several! contributions to the growing number of “Bad Seed” motion pictures — films in which a spiritually or psychologically twisted child, almost invariably female, is used as an agent of mayhem and destruction. These have included Nicholas Gessner’s The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane, Eddy Matalon’s Cathy’s Curse, (both of which were coproductions with France) and the Quebec episode of Denis Heroux’s The Uncanny (a coproduction with Great Britain). Except for Gessner’s film, which had the advantage of Jodie Foster in the title role and U.S. distribution by AmericanInternational, none of these works were distinguished by their plotting, execution, or by their box office reception. Thus, Richard Loncraine’s Full Circle, based on Peter Straub’s rather grisly novel Julia is not in very good company. All the more wonder, then, that it is really not as bad as one might expect. It is perhaps to the credit of the backers of this film (including bookstore chain scion Julian Melzack whose Classic Film Industries is the Canadian production company), that they did not scrimp on _ production values. Cinematographer Peter Hamman shot Full Circle in a sumptuous, if rather dark style, using wide-screen Technovision equipment. While one may feel 40/Cinema Canada Mia Farrow, sinking into depression, with photos of her dead daughter. that Hamman overdoes his backlighting, it at least creates a thoroughly gloomy atmosphere that permeates the film. This is probably all to the good when the problems of the script are considered. Writers Harry Bromley Davenport (adaption) and Dave Humphries (screenplay) have streamlined Straub’s convoluted plot — wisely, though uncharacteristically discarding much of the supernatural and almost all of the sexual aspects of the story. The resulting material could have made a good suspenseful thriller in the Hitchcock mold, had the director had the wit to do so. Richard Loncraine; however, chose instead to indulge in some fancy games with the viewers, beginning with some rather obvious casting. Mia Farrow, looking as clipped and gaunt as she did ten years ago, plays Julia Lofting, a depressive young woman who buys an atmospheric period house off London’s Holland Park. There, she shuts herself away from her domineering husband Magnus (stolidly played by Keir Dullea) to moum over the violent death of her eight year old daughter. Soon she feels herself haunted by the vengeful spirit of another child, Olivia Rudge, who had also died violently over thirty years before, having been the instigator of the murder and mutilation of a playmate. It is just possible that Julia is insane, and has conjured Olivia’s ghost out of a series of coincidences and her guilt over her daughter. Using this basic story, in itself derivative, Loncraine shows threadbare imagination by making passing allusions to a whole raft of psychological films, among them Rosemary’s Baby and Secret Ceremony, Bunny Lake is Missing and Wait Until Dark and even uses some Vertigo-like staircase shots. In the midst of this, the plot gets so mired that Loncraine kills off three members of the cast — Dullea, Tom Conti as Julia’s boyfriend, and Robin Gammell as one of Olivia’s former gang — without any other reason than to get them out of the way. The deaths do not affect Farrow’s character at all. This kind of arbitrary twist is not a means of compelling suspense; it is an artificial outlet from a sloppy plot. The main problem with Full Circle seems to lie in the contradictions which are inherent in Loncraine’s approach to the film. He was obviously aiming for a higher artistic plane than the blood-drenched fantasies of a Corman disciple like David Cronenberg. The fact that he never shows the phantom