Don't Look Now

Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie star in Nicolas Roeg's BAFTA-winning supernatural thriller, based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier. Following the death of their young daughter, who drowns in the grounds of their home, grieving couple John and Laura Baxter (Sutherland and Christie) depart to an out-of-season Venice where John is working as a church restorer. But after Laura has an encounter with a mystical blind woman (Hilary Mason) she begins to believe that her child might be alive after all. And then a sceptical John catches glimpses of a red-hooded child and gives chase through the eerie and labyrinthine streets of the city. But is this figure purely in their minds or are they being led by darker forces? Roeg crafted a brave and fierce study in obsession and grief, from Sutherland and Christie's love-making scene to the nightmare chases through Venice, sequences that link backwards and forwards through movie history, referencing and influencing Hitchcock, Death in Venice, Schindler's List, Fellini, and Bresson.