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Wrapping his film around Daphne Du Maurier's story, director Nicolas Roeg has fashioned an unusually spooky and effective cinema-going experience. Central are the Baxter family members, all supported by the parental duo Laura (Julie Christie) and John (Donald Sutherland). A young, professional couple, they have darling children Christine (Sharon Williams) and Johnny (Nicholas Salter). Unfortunately, in one of those terrible, retrospectively avoidable twists of fate, Christine drowns while trying to retrieve her brightly-coloured ball. At a later time John has submerged himself in work, architectural restoration, meaning that he and Laura relocate to Venice. Here a chance meeting with sisters Heather (Hilary Mason) and Wendy (Clelia Matania) leads to an unravelling of life's fibre.
Part of what makes Don't Look Now special is its location, the fluidly atmospheric streets and canals of Venice. Under the watchful eye of Roeg, cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond captures everything from the warm ambience of sunset to the shadowed creepiness of dank, subsiding corridors. As the story shifts past a variety of moods, these become refracted through Venice's prism. One moment there's hope and joy, the next danger and uncertainty. We appear to be gazing at the unchanged but, like the city, that's an illusion. Roeg ensures that you never quite know whether to believe all that your eyes drink in, it may belong to the assumed context but it could easily be a sign from sometime else. Don't Look Now keeps you off-balance.
Much of this discomfort stems from Graeme Clifford's editing, though that barely begins to describe the warp of this particular film. Sounds fade in and out, magnified and brought forward, then diminished to a whisper. Pino Donaggio's score twists and traps, echoing character emotion. Richmond shoots from inclined and skewed camera angles to heighten the tension, viewing scenes from obscured lines, almost as if to imply that someone is watching. Then, with hand-held camera, he sweeps around, enhancing John and Laura's search for something, anything, a clue to make sense of it all. Unexpected cuts and fades slice through the story, connecting and separating themes and elements; a reflection blurs into a face, a mirror into a memory. Nothing is quite as it seems, as if the surface hides a whole other world, one governed by different rules.
Christie and Sutherland prove more than equal to the challenge of Don't Look Now, serenely able to deal with its rampant symbolism. Together, as husband and wife, they evince a depth of understanding that only arises via growth and evolution; they are each other's friend, lover and supporter. In everything from lovemaking to ordering from a restaurant menu, the pair somehow rise above being merely talent for hire. Yet, when apart, it's clear that their outlooks oppose; John belittles any talk of contacting Christine in the spirit world, Laura ravenously embraces the possibility as nourishment for her voided soul. These are tricky characters to play, and get right, but Roeg has chosen his actors well. In a story that never actually states its position, the cast members are impressive.
From certain perspectives the film most certainly exhibits flaws; it leaves many, if not all, questions unanswered, the pace is often languorous and Roeg seems consumed by a passion for image over prose. However, speculative interpretation feeds upon Don't Look Now's disorientation, allowing itself a slow draw towards Roeg's gaspingly emotional culmination. You're never quite sure what it all means, where and if there's an inner join, but even at the end it's hard to feel cheated. The tale is open-ended almost to the point of confusion but without quite stepping over the threshold, an important consideration. Roeg takes you on a journey with the Baxters and, almost without fuss, he makes Don't Look Now work despite itself.
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