Trouble in Mind

After the witty, emotional roundelay of Choose Me, Rudolph here plunges even further into his own imaginative world, and the result is wonderful. Located in a mythic, dangerous 'Rain City', his tenderly observed characters pick their way through the battlefield of love, all in search of their peculiar fulfilment. Former cop Hawk (Kristofferson) completes his prison sentence for killing a mobster and returns to his favourite haunt, a café run by old flame Wanda (Bujold). There he falls for a blonde princess (Singer), while she loses touch with her recklessly ambitious hubby (ebulliently played by Carradine, sporting increasingly wacky hairdos as he falls deeper into criminal ways). Forever in the background lurks mean fat cat Hilly, a local Sydney Greenstreet (unexpectedly incarnated by a poised Divine). Rudolph's script is both playful and precise, his images fantastic yet real, the music elegiac but ecstatically sung by an impassioned Marianne Faithfull. Part thriller, part comic fantasy, part love story, Trouble in Mind even offers an ambiguous, high-flown ending that suggests this really is the stuff that dreams are made of.