Movies - Don't Look Now

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	Movies - Don't Look Now

Don't Look Now is an Italian-British thriller with supernatural themes, directed by Nicolas Roeg and released in 1973. It is based on a short story by Daphne Du Maurier.

Don't Look Now tells the story of an English couple, Laura (Julie Christie) and John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) whose young daughter has recently drowned in a tragic accident at home. Their grief threatens to destroy the marriage. Seeking a change of scenery and an opportunity to work through their sense of loss, they take a "working vacation" to Venice, Italy, where John has been contracted to restore an ancient church. While John attends to this project, Laura is befriended by two strange elderly sisters who claim that they are in psychic contact with the Baxters' dead daughter. Laura is drawn to the sisters, but John finds their influence on her unsettling and suspects them of deceit. The ensuing drama is set against a subplot involving a serial killer who has eluded the police. John catches glimpses of a childlike figure in red raingear who resembles his lost daughter, although the figure vanishes whenever John pursues it. He begins to question his own sanity and that of his wife as Laura appears to be completely under the command of the sisters, who in turn suggest that John shares their gift of communication with the dead. John's fears and Laura's apparent obsession with the sisters lead them into a spiraling vortex of coincidences, recurring themes and motifs (light on water, breaking glass, the colour red), which reaches a dramatic conclusion in an old bell tower.

The love scene

Although memorable for its puzzling story and unusual editing, Don't Look Now has become almost as well-known for its sex scene involving Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. The scene was unusually graphic for the time, and was severely trimmed for the original American theatrical release in order to receive an MPAA R rating. Subsequently, the scene has often been admired as an unusually successful attempt at capturing a loving sexual relationship on screen, to the extent that some viewers have believed it to be unsimulated; the director and stars have repeatedly denied this.

The scene was an unscripted last-minute improvisation by Roeg who felt that without it there would be too many scenes of the couple arguing. It is edited in an atypical fashion, with the footage of the act intercut with footage of the couple getting dressed afterward.

Director Steven Soderbergh paid homage to the scene by including a tamer version in a similar style in his 1998 Elmore Leonard adaption Out of Sight
. A similar scene also appears in the 1981 thriller, Ghost Story
, between Craig Wasson and Alice Krige. Christie and Sutherland reteamed for the 1992 film, The Railway Station Man, which also included a frank depiction of a sexual act.

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