That Cold Day in the Park (Robert Altman, 1969)

I last saw this film over 30 years ago when I learned that Bruce LaBruce pegged it as an influence on his 1991 queercore classic No Skin Off My Ass and I adored it then. Today, it feels underbaked, perhaps a result of its divergence from the reportedly queerer 1965 Richard Miles novel on which it's based. Sandy Dennis plays Frances, a schoolmarmish woman in a raw, uninviting Vancouver who takes in a young man (Michael Burns) she spies shivering in the rain. Frances' social circle consists solely of people her late parents' age so she finds in the unnamed man a chance for a more brash and impetuous relationship. Thus begins a series of psychosexual games where Sandy and the young man trade off positions of dominance and submission. Altman shows him in various states of undress and Frances even zeroes in on his predilection for not wearing socks. But where Frances' longing for lust is finely etched, the young man remains a cipher, again perhaps due to an apparent dequeering of the novel. And when the games devolve into horror shtick, the lasting impression is of Altman giving up on the weightier implications of the story. In compensation, the improbably bizarre layout of Frances' apartment and László Kovács' fractal photography dazzle the eye when the mind turns to mush.

Grade: B+ (upper a notch in deference to my younger self)