Petersen

Petersen (Thompson), another in the Alvin Purple brigade of Australian superstuds, is a peculiarly repulsive anti-hero who grunts his way acquiescently through various encounters and a baffling mish-mash of middle class observation and incident. The fact that the film has some well-observed moments (the script is by David Williamson) only makes its overall effect all the more inconsequential. We are whirled from the sterility of academic life, via the hypocrisy of marriage, to the crude vulnerability of a lower middle class party menaced by Hell's Angels. But each reasonable scene is promptly knocked on the head by idiotic drinking bouts and repulsive leers in the direction of women's lib, abortion, etc. The fact that the softcore sex is less tedious than usual remains something of an achievement in view of the hero's corpse-like demeanour.