Track 29

Track 29

Movie Poster
Directed by Nicolas Roeg
Produced by George Harrison
Rick McCallum
Written by Dennis Potter
Starring
Music by Stanley Myers
Cinematography Alex Thomson
Edited by Tony Lawson
Production
company
Distributed by Island Pictures
Release dates
 5 August 1988 (UK)
9 September 1988 (USA)
Running time
 91 min.
Country United Kingdom
United States
Language English
Budget $5,000,000 (estimated)
Box office $429,028 (USA)

Track 29 is a 1988 film directed by Nicolas Roeg. It was produced by George Harrison's HandMade Films with Rick McCallum. The film was nominated for and won a few awards at regional film festivals.[1] The writer, Dennis Potter, adapted his earlier television play, Schmoedipus (1974), changing the setting from London to the United States.[2] It was filmed in Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina

Plot

The childless wife of a small town doctor in North Carolina, tired of his spending too much time playing with his model trains and her empty life, meets a young British hitchhiker in a café. She starts thinking he might be the baby she was made to give up for adoption when she was a schoolgirl of 15. In her fantasies, as the two start getting to know each other, she finds she has not only the child she has always missed but also a potentially virile lover. He for his part starts wanting to harm her husband, who in fact is planning to leave her for a nurse he loves.

Main cast

Actor Role
Theresa Russell Linda Henry
Gary Oldman Martin
Christopher Lloyd Henry Henry
Colleen Camp Arlanda
Sandra Bernhard Nurse Stein
Seymour Cassel Dr. Bernard Fairmont

Critical reception

Janet Maslin of The New York Times thought the film missed the mark:

“ Though the screenwriter and the director clearly share certain affinities, their collective efforts on Track 29, which opens today at the D. W. Griffith and Quad Cinema, amount to overkill, particularly since the direction is so laden with contempt for the characters... Though Mr. Roeg's films can often be perverse (and startlingly, bracingly so), they are rarely this silly. Nor are they this maddening, since Track 29 does contain the seeds of something tantalizing. Linda's attempt to come to terms with her past through a wildly unpredictable, even dangerous fantasy has the stamp of Mr. Potter's better material, but it has been made too mindless to have any impact. The real urgency of Mr. Oldman's performance, and the wicked blandness of Mr. Lloyd's, seem regrettably wasted, under the circumstances.[3] ”

However, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated it 3 stars out of his 4 star rating system and found the film well done but painful:

“ Somebody asked me if I liked this movie, and I had to answer that I did not, but then I realized once again what an inadequate word "like" is. The reason I didn't like "Track 29" is that the film is unlikable - perhaps deliberately so. But that doesn't make it a bad film, and it probably makes it a more interesting one. Like many of the strange, convoluted works of Nicolas Roeg (Don't Look Now, Bad Timing, Eureka, Insignificance), it is bad-tempered, kinky and misogynistic. But not every film is required to massage us with pleasure. Some are allowed to be abrasive and frustrating, to make us think.[4] ”

References

  1. ↑ Track 29 (1988) - Awards
  2. ↑ Track 29 (1988) - Plot Summary
  3. ↑ Maslin, Janet (1988-09-09). "Movie Review - Track 29 - Reviews/Film; Curious Scenes From a Southern Marriage - NYTimes.com". Movies.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-04-28.
  4. ↑ "Track 29 :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. Retrieved 2011-04-28.
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