Adapted by Gillian Freeman from Richard Miles’ 1965 novel, That Cold Day in the Park was Robert Altman’s second feature and one of his most fascinating.
Sexual repression is dangerous; it carves a hole in the centre of an individual’s soul that cannot be filled or ignored, a hole that gets bigger and bigger the more you force your desires down. It’s a cold, wet day in Vancouver when the affluent, quiet and slightly aloof Frances (Sandy Dennis) spots a Boy from the window of her apartment (Michael Burns) sitting on a bench as the rain pours, wearing only his jeans and a sodden shirt. Frances can’t bear watching the boy struggle in the rain.
Once her guests have left, she walks down to the park and invites him in to get dry. The boy accepts the invitation and remains silent as Frances runs him a hot bath and hangs up his clothes to dry. As the boy bathes, Frances’s icy frigidity begins to thaw; who is this mysterious boy? Does he have a home? For the first time in years, this lost and lonely young woman has a silent but intriguing young man for company, a marked change from the closed, dusty group of old friends she sees at stilted dinner parties, lawn bowls and drinks receptions, where the much older Dr Charles Stevenson attempts to woo her, not knowing he repulses her.
Adapted by Gillian Freeman from Richard Miles’ 1965 novel, That Cold Day in the Park was Robert Altman’s second feature and one of his most fascinating. Released as the sixties gave way to the ’70s, That Cold Day in the Park explores two opposing worlds of sexuality and freedom, one born from the summer of love and the other rooted in lingering 1950s sexual repression.
As these two worlds attempt to coexist in a Vancouver apartment, what starts as an innocent game quickly becomes a psychodrama, then violently lurches into horror in the final act.
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