Editor Reviews:

Description:
"It's a very real film about two people trying to get through to each other," director Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night) says of his landmark romance Petulia, set in summer-of-love-era San Francisco. There Julie Christie plays a unhappily married socialite trying to get through to a recently divorced doctor (George C. Scott), who in his own words just wants to "feel something." He'll soon feel, even hurt, a lot. Because we know why kooky Petulia so desperately reaches out. As Lester zigzags through the flashbacks and flash-forwards of cinematographer Nicolas Roeg's startling images and Lawrence B. Marcus' knowing screenplay, Petulia's jigsaw pieces form a celluloid time capsule of life and love in the turbulent '60s.

DVD Features:
Featurette
Theatrical Trailer

Amazon.com essential video:
This Richard Lester film will tell you more about how confusing the '60s were than any hackneyed NBC miniseries ever could. In this fragmented love story, told in a nonlinear fashion that bounces back and forth in time, George C. Scott plays a newly divorced surgeon who meets a charming if scattered young woman, Petulia (Julie Christie). He falls into an affair with her, only to discover that she is married to a seemingly normal guy (Richard Chamberlain)--who also happens to be extremely abusive. But his efforts to extricate her from the marriage, set against the flower-power scene in San Francisco, only frustrate him with her indecisiveness. The film features performances by the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company, and captures a sense of the confusion caused by the youthquake that swept the nation. --Marshall Fine

Rating : - One of the Greats!
It took me awhile to see this film. Most of the time it was out of print and unavailable. It isn't a film they show on Sunday afternoons when people are spending time at home. It goes deeper and more complicated than most people are able to fathom, especially when watching it in a casual manner on TV. Luckily, I found a old copy of a paperback I probably got at a garage sale years ago in my basement. The book is wonderful and I highly recommend it. The book also helps understand the way the movie is put together as they are essentially the same. A doctor who leaves his wife and children with no particular goal or reason becomes involved with a younger married woman who portrays herself as a carefree kook. She presents herself as a carefree version of a fling but immediately it becomes clear that casual is the furthest thing from her mind. She is a woman trying to free herself from a marriage for money which has become a nightmare. Her husband is wife beater of the most violent kind and his family participates in the constant cover up. She is a pawn in a game that could get herself killed. Petulia seems to believe that the doctor could save her from the abusive relationship along with a young boy from Mexico her husband essentially kidnapped and abused also. A very sad touching film of two good people stuck in very sad situations. One of seemingly benign career dedication and social conventions. The other of tighter social conventions and a threat to her life. The story is beautifully told but does demand attention. It is a film that has yet to be surpassed in its depiction of the 1960s.