'TRACK 29': A WILD, BIZARRE RIDE ON THE PSYCHODRAMA EXPRESS

Sacramento Bee

(c) 1996 Sacramento Bee. All rts. reserv.

04557939 'TRACK 29': A WILD, BIZARRE RIDE ON THE PSYCHODRAMA 
EXPRESS SACRAMENTO BEE (SB) - FRIDAY December 2, 1988 By: Joe 
Baltake Bee Movie Critic Edition: METRO FINAL  Section: SCENE  Page: 
SC7 Word Count: 739

MEMO: MOVIE REVIEW

TRACK 29

* * * *

Cast: Theresa Russell, Gary Oldman, Christopher Lloyd, Colleen Camp, 
Sandra Bernhard  and  Seymour  Cassell.  Director:  Nicholas  Roeg. 
Producer: Rick McCallum. Screenplay: Dennis Potter. Cinematographer: 
Alex Thomson. Editor: Tony  Lawson.  Music:  Stanley Myers. Distributor: 
Island. Running time: 90 minutes.

  Tower.
  Rated R.

TEXT: INSTANTLY  BIZARRE  -  INSTANTLY  BIZARRE  --  even  
insistently bizarre -- Nicholas   Roeg's  "Track  29"  mixes  the  familiar  
conventions  of  your time-tested  malcontent-hausfrau  dramas  ("Come  
Back,  Little  Sheba" and "Who's  Afraid  of  Virginia  Woolf?")  with  the 
challenging techniques of post-modern storytelling ("Blue Velvet").

   The  result  is  a  demanding,  often alienating but never disappointing 
psychodrama  that  looks sunny and lemon-fresh (we're in the suburbs 
again) but  that has the dank aroma of a nasty underground feature. It's as 
if Ken Russell  had directed a John Hughes script ("She's Having a 
Mutant"?); only the  collaborators here are the much more interesting -- and 
subtle -- Roeg ("Don't  Look Now" and "The Man Who Fell to Earth") and 
the erudite writer, Dennis   Potter   ("Pennies  From  Heaven,"  "The  
Singing  Detective"  and "Dreamchild").

   The  texture  is  everything  here, not the so-called plot. But it's too 
compelling -- and amusing -- to write around, so here goes: Theresa 
Russell (Roeg's  wife  and  best  leading  lady)  plays the Shirley Booth role 
of a troubled, drinking woman caught in a loveless, sexless marriage.
   If  you can imagine Booth playing Lolita or Baby Doll (wearing braces on 
her  teeth,  no  less), then you'll have some idea of what the impressively 
talented  Russell achieves here. Her name is Linda Henry and she has a 
dark secret  that  has something to do with a rape that took place at a 
carnival when  she  was 16 (the teenage character is also played by 
Russell, replete with a sizable overbite) and the baby she conceived and 
had to give up.

NOW, LINDA spends most of her days sloshed, watching "Rocky and 
Bullwinkle" on  the tube and fantasizing about the son she abandoned and 
the baby she'd like  to  have.  Her  husband,  Dr. Henry Henry (Humbert 
Humbert, anyone?), couldn't  care  less. Henry (Christopher Lloyd) may 
have the bulk of a man, but  he's  a  boy.  He plays with his vast train 
collection instead of with Linda (the film's title comes from the 
Gordon-Warren standard, "Chattanooga Choo  Choo"),  and  his  affair with 
his stern, authoritative nurse (Sandra Bernhard) is one based on discipline. 
She spanks him daily and he loves it. As I said, he's a child.

   Henry  has  built  Linda a cute gingerbread house with an ugly satellite 
disc planted right in front of it on the lawn -- so we know right off where his  
priorities  really lie. Anyway, into this world stumbles a stranger -- the  kind 
 that Terence Stamp always used to play (in films like "Teorema") -- a 
stranger whose job it is to seduce Linda in more ways than one.
   Martin (the satanic Gary Oldman), as he is called, in no time flat tells 
Linda  that  he  is the son she so cruelly gave up and now he wants to play 
mommy-and-sonny  games  with  her.  He  sings  a  fractured version of 
that chestnut, "Mother," to her as she sobs.

   This veritable hophead wants to "catch up."

   "I've  come all the way across the pond in search of my momma," he 
says. Inexplicably, he's British.

  Martin is something of an enigma. He definitely exists -- Linda meets him 
in  a  fast-food  restaurant  where  she's  with her friend (the ever-randy 
Colleen  Camp)  --  but  at  a  certain point, it is difficult to determine 
whether the relationship she comes to have with him is real or a figment of 
her  warped  imagination.  You know, she met him once and then couldn't 
get him  out of her mind. And so, the rapid-fire one-day affair that follows -- 
while Henry and his nurse are at a train collectors' convention -- could be 
the real thing or a fantasy based on a real person. Take your pick.

   If  it's  real,  then "Track 29" is definitely a demented psychodrama on 
motherhood  and  incest;  if it isn't, then it's simply a perverse fantasia 
about  a  woman  with  a  sick,  sick mind. Either way, this film isn't for 
everyone.

   "Track  29"  is downbeat, hilarious and visionary, all at the same time. It 
has psychosexual energy to spare -- it's hyperreal -- and yet, thanks to 
Roeg's restraint as a filmmaker, it's also formal and controlled.

   It  turns the ordinary into something deranged and eroticizes everything in 
site. It's unique.