Performance
In his acting debut, Mick Jagger plays Turner, a reclusive former rock star who has "lost his demon" and is living with his girlfriend, Pherber (Anita Pallenberg, Keith Richards' girlfriend at the time) and her girlfriend, Lucy (Michele Breton).
On the run and fearing for his life, a thuggish London crim called Chas (James Fox), turns up on Turner's doorstep and elects to hole up in his Notting Hill digs. Not surprisingly, given the trio's Free Love vibe and the hallucinogenic substances on offer, Chas gets to plumb some unexpected homoerotic depths during his stay.
Warner Bros. executives had conniptions when they finally saw the film the studio had financed and threatened to destroy the negative. Cammell and Roeg employed the full arsenal of dislocating tropes drawn from experimental and underground cinema and hardly pulled their punches when it came to depictions of drug-spiked sex and violence. Cooler heads prevailed with personnel changes at Warner Bros. and the film finally had a theatrical release in August 1970, two years after it was produced.
"The surprise of the movie and the reason to see it is Mick Jagger's performance." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
