Neil Let me preface this by saying it is 2016, I have no knowledge/read the book from which this odd movie comes from.Latenight TV & I miss the first few moments of the screening, but first thing I see is a magical portal, so I decide to record & view the following morning.Character 'D', is supplied by an official with a new young girl/person to look after, well, because. Along with her comes her pet, increasing the mouths to feed.Gangs of youth roam the streets, BBQ ing animals & not doing much else. The magic wall, leads to a room which changes at the whim of the director.Like Alice in Wonderland, I guess the 2nd reality is supposed to mean something, but this failed on me.Cave-children are seen once & are there for effect only it seems.The future might in fact be bleak, but certainly will be more exciting than this movie.

alsation72 A woman lives in an apartment with a magical wall (apparently). She is living in the near future where society has somewhat crumbled (apparently).She is enlisted to adopt (or foster) a teenage girl and the story largely follows this new character henceforth. The teenage girl hooks up with a young man who is (apparently) running an orphanage despite being first depicted as a street hood with bad character. Strange.There are also some wild children who, for no apparent reason, wear black theatre make-up on their faces and wear cave-man outfits. The man who runs the orphanage tries to bring these wild children back to his orphanage where they cause havoc.As far as I could tell this was the plot; it was hard to tell because the story was so poorly told it was quite hard to keep track.This was made in 1981 and set in the future ... why the hell does it look like the early 1970's?? There is virtually nothing to indicate it is supposed to be the future, except that newspapers are strewn across the streets.And if society has collapsed why then are there police sirens heard and food on the table.Why did a government agency force the lady to adopt the teenage girl yet there seem to be orphans everywhere not watched over by the state.I can't even be bothered talking about the magic wall and the interaction with a Victorian-era family. An idiotic distraction from the "plot".This is a dreary, badly made film. One is not rewarded by sitting through the entire length of it.

David Bean I see from the last few reviews (at least one of which is one viewer's opinion of Christie's career more than of this particular film) that they didn't like the movie. OK. (And for the record, the fact that some have access to working helicopters doesn't mean most people would, and an extensive, working infrastructure isn't needed to maintain relatively few of them.) I've got the DVD of this film, and the transfer certainly leaves something to be desired. But if that, or the "helicopter issue", or a "tacky" film score, will negate any enjoyment you might have, then this film (and this type of film) is not for you. But it definitely is worth watching. Maybe a different director, or the same director taking a different approach would have made this a better film, and one that would have pleased its' critics.

mobia Though I was more impressed with this movie when it had it's theatrical debut in the early 1980s, I still recommend this mysterious mood piece. The story concerns a quiet middle aged woman (Julie Christie) living alone during some catastrophic breakdown of modern society. Young illiterate kids live like rats in the subways, garbage covers the streets and nomadic people scavenge in aimless traveling groups. The woman is given a young teenage girl (Leonie Mellinger) to take care of and the girl becomes sexually involved with a young man who takes on the task of caring for homeless children (while he simultaneously sleeps with them). Alongside this melancholic tale, there's another dimension revealed when the woman discovers a Victorian family living inside a strange membranous wall of her apartment. There are curious psychological parallels between the world in the wall and the goings-on in the woman's other dystopia world. The final scenes are truly weird and puzzling so if you like your movies straightforward with tidy narratives, this one isn't for you. For those who enjoy the bizarre and challenging, take a look. My only real criticism is the truly awful synth soundtrack (by Mike Thorne?any relation to Ken?) which constantly works against the imagery.