Petulia

Philadelphia-born Richard Lester, who became British cinema's one-man new wave with A Hard Day's Night and The Knack, chose San Francisco as the location for Petulia, his first film in the U.S. "It's the most exciting city anywhere on earth," he explained. The excitement, unfortunately, seems to have been too much for him. Petulia is a dazzlement of props and location shots, around which the actors ricochet helplessly through a non-romance between a girl who is some kind of nut and an orthopedic surgeon who seems to be going the same route.

The opening sequence leaves the audience in no doubt that Petulia is soing to be pretty tricky stuff. A woman with her neck in a brace is being pushed in a wheelchair through a hospital basement. Sudden flash of rock singer in psychedelic lights. Now they're wheeling her into an elevator filled with other damaged patients. Out of the elevator they go . . . why, it's a big party, a charity dance, the sign says, to benefit some highway safety campaign. George C. Scott, looking annoyed, is leaving. Julie Christie, looking lovely, is trying to get Scott to go to bed with her. He is trying to ignore her. She introduces herself, points out her handsome husband, asks Scott if he's married. He's divorced. Bad news, says Petulia: "How can I have an affair with an unmarried man?" "My divorce doesn't become final till next month," he offers. "I'll get my purse," she says.

So she pursues him through most of the movie, doing calculatedly kooky things to attract his attention, such as smashing a store window to steal an enormous tuba which she totes around, and breaking a rib so that he can prescribe bed rest--in his bed. While Julie does her sleekly sexy best with Petulia, Scott never once loses his look of peevish disgruntlement, possibly because he doesn't even get the girl in the end.

The only one clearly enjoying himself is Director Lester, who has unabashedly used the story as a pretext to gleek, glom and glare at the Frisco scene with his cameras. "My apartment's only four blocks from here," says the doctor. He and Petulia go to a super de luxe motel instead, allowing Lester to display the automated checkin, the key that lights up when you reach your door, and the vibrating double bed. When a pal wants to have a serious talk with Scott about his marital problems, they go to lunch at a topless restaurant so that the camera can do some plain and fancy dollying. Lester also swings a skillful and satirical lens around deserted Fort Winfield Scott, the Penguin Pool at Fisherman's Wharf and the hippie scene, contriving somehow to get his actors into most of the scenes. There is so little for them to do that he need hardly have bothered.

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