Another of the movies that I recorded because the synopsis sounded interesting was The Fox. (Surprisingly enough, the titular fox is an actual fox.) Recently, I sat down to watch it.
The movie is set somewhere in Canada (a scene near the end is set at a train station a bit north of Toronto although I don't think the movie reveals any more than this), in a cold farming area. Jill (Sandy Dennis) inherited some money, which she's used to buy one of those old farms, together with her partner Ellen (Anne Heywood) whom she met in her school days. Not that the two of them are particularly good at farming, but being in the middle of nowhere allows them to have the relationship they do without much harassment from anybody else.
Well, not from other people; there's a fox that keeps trying to get into their henhouse, and one of the recurring themes of the movie is Ellen's inability to shoot the fox. Not because she's a bad shot, but because once she sees the fox she seems unable to pull the trigger. As for Jill, she's doing the indoor work because she's probably even less suited for farming than Ellen is. But somehow, the two of them keep going on, because they have each other, and that's some comfort on those cold winter nights.
The mildly idyllic life could go on at least until Jill's money runs out, but of course we wouldn't have much of a movie in that case. As with The Egg and I, we know there's going to be a stranger showing up at the farm to shatter Jill and Ellen's peaceful existence. That stranger is Paul (Keir Dullea). Paul is a merchant marine, and he also happens to be the grandson of the man who owned the farm up until his death. Presumably Paul was at sea when Grandpa died, and now he's showing up because he wants to see the place one final time. As I said, it's a shock for the two women, but at the same time they could also use a bit of the sort of labor that a big, strong man (or even just Keir Dullea, who's at least bigger than the two women) could provide them.
Of course, you also know that Paul is going to fall in love with one of the two. In a twist from The Children's Hour, Paul doesn't fall for the one who more closely fits the Hollywood stereotype of beauty (that would be the Sandy Dennis character) the way that James Garner is set to marry the Audrey Hepburn character and Shirley MacLaine is made up to be more butch. Instead, it's Anne Heywood's character who fits the more butch stereotype, and Paul falls for her, which naturally presents all sorts of complications. It's too bad both women aren't bi, or else they could have a ménage à trois and everybody could live happily ever after.
The Fox is a somewhat slow-moving movie, and like Long Day's Journey Into Night it's one that's got a very limited number of characters and a relatively small scope in terms of setting, although at least the farm here is bigger than the Tyrone house. I haven't been the biggest fan of some of the other adaptations of D.H. Lawrence's work, notably Women in Love, so when I saw his name in the opening credits, I had some trepidation. However, I wound up not disliking the movie.
I will add, however, that The Fox is another of those movies that's definitely going to be an acquired taste. I think the sort of people who dislike the stereotypical foreign film from the days where foreign films that reached America were disproportionately seen as pretentious arthouse stuff are probably going to be less likely to appreciate the movie. But for those who are a little more adventurous, The Fox is definitely worth a watch.
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