Tuesday, September 27, 2005

David Denby

“It's a shame the movie is so bad, because Kathleen Quinlan is a very strong young actress. Few performers have the ability to project intelligence, so Quinlan's triumph here is unusual: she's quick and decisive and at the same time so wretchedly unhappy that you become persuaded of the romantic notion that misery is being young and brilliant with nothing to do with your perceptions and feelings. Quinlan alone saves the movie from total inanity: in her sessions with the analyst (a maternal Bibi Andersson does her best with dull material) there's lots of pain, but she's also sulky, naughty, flirtatious. We're captivated by the notion that psychosis expresses distorted sexual energies. The other actresses, desperate to make an impression, may be working up a routine, but Quinlan gives a full-scale performance.”

David Denby
New York, August 16, 1977

John Simon

“Yet, I suppose, we must be grateful even for this much from an American movie, even one with a British director and one British scenarist. And there is the flawless performance of Kathleen Quinlan as , Deborah. Miss Quinlan has been good as a precocious tomboy in American Graffiti and overeager jailbait in Lifeguard, but I was unprepared for the staggering, unaffected integrity of this performance. There must be two tremendous temptations, especially for a young actress, in a role such as this: to act the sweet, lovable, lost soul, or simply, to overact. Miss Quinlan will have none of this: she is pitiful, ugly, even horrible, by turns, as called for, always in a manner that I must describe, for lack of better words, as crisp and efficient, and never suggests (as so many actresses would) an uncontrollable personal dementia of her own, only the sensitive and sensible enactment of it.”

John Simon
National Review, August 1, 1977