The Fox' Is Dreary Film Fare

Anyone having an abiding interest in murky symbolism, beautiful photography and lesbianism (a mixed bag for sure) can have a fine time at "The Fox."

It is a peculiar film, overlong and frequently dreary, made bearable only by moody photography of winter scenes by Bill Fraker, which are a delight to the eye.

SANDY DENNIS brings her own brand of halting charm to a particular role for the movies the femin-

ine half of a lesbian pair

that lives in an old farm.

arm.

Miss Dennis' sniffling and her trick of starting to say her trick of starting to say one thing and changing in midgasp to say another does not manage to save her in this role; she is only partly convincing.

Much of the film is spent in a slow-paced setting up of this pair in an arrangement that approaches husband and wife. Anne Heywood, a beautiful girl with no outbeautiful girl with no outward suggestion of masculinity and feminine in form (you can surely tell in a dis-

tasteful bathroom scene) takes a masculine sort of

role.

SHE GOES OUT with shotgun, she chops trees puts her feet on the kitchen table with her boots on. This This seemed to be pushing, the masculinity symbol too far. A lot of masculine males seldom do this.

and, so help me, she ees

Miss Dennis stays in the kitchen and bakes muffins.

Into this environment in the dead of winter strays Keir Dullea, curly haired, handsome and apparently not too bright or he wouldn't try for a lesbian. He sets out for the booted, jacketed,

shotgun wielding one.

The shotgun girl has been unable to bring herself to gun down a fox (a male) that has been snapping up the chickens of late. Come to think of it, the fox moved in a lot like Dullea moved

'The Fox'

Colony

Dreary drama about a couple of lesbians whose happiness is upset when one of them goes straight; the photography is a delight and should have been saved for a better story. 110 minutes.

in. (Get the symbolism? Very tricky).

Dullea, a mighty killer ofpheasants, sneaks out one night and bags the fox.

·· EVENTUALLY he bags the girl too, using for the purpose an abandoned shed. This is standard equipment Lawrence works, of which on all old farms in D. H. this film is an adaptation. The encounter is one of panting, explicit sexuality. Apparently this girl likes boys, too.

The backslid lesbian seems to repent hed straying and makes up with her

of

girlfriend in a surfeit passionate kisses. This sets the scene for the longestlasting and least believable death wish in the annals of the films.

It endures for as long as it takes a man to chop down a tree some two feet in diameter. There she stands, all that time as he chops

***

away and suddenly, crash! A distasteful film, drearily done. -E.B.

Directed by Mark Rydell from screenplay by Lewis John Carlino and Howard Koch, based on a novella by D. H. Lawrence. Photography by Bill Fraker. Produced by Raymond Stoss. Released by Claridge.

Paul March

Keir Dullea Anne Heywood JIII ................................................................ Andy Dennis