Line #41 Film/ThatColdDayInThePark


1	[[quoteright:305:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/that_cold_day_in_the_park_1969.jpeg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:305:''"It is strange knowing that someone else is in the house. I'm so used to being here alone."'']]
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4	''That Cold Day in the Park'' is a 1969 PsychologicalThriller film directed by Creator/RobertAltman, starring Creator/SandyDennis, Michael Burns, and Susanne Benton.
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6	Frances Austen (Dennis) is a thirtysomething woman who lives alone in the huge UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} apartment she inherited from her late parents. One day while hosting a dinner party, she spies a 19-year-old boy (Burns) sitting alone in the rain on a bench in the park next to her apartment building. Feeling sorry for him, Frances invites him inside to dry off. He doesn't speak, but she appreciates his company and invites him to spend the night in her guest room. When he awakens the next morning, he discovers that she has locked him in the room.
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8	Though he still accepts her hospitality, the Boy finds Frances's behavior odd. At last he manages to pry open a window and leave via the building's fire escape. We learn that he's not mute at all; he's a middle class kid who splits his time between his family's suburban home and a squalid houseboat where his hippie sister Nina (Benton) lives with her American boyfriend.
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10	Unhappy with that situation, the Boy soon returns to Frances and her apartment, only to find that her concern for him is starting to take a disturbing detour.
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12	Filmed a few months before ''[[Film/{{Mash}} MAS*H]]'', this was basically Altman's first "Altman" film, in which he got to use some of his favorite techniques (improvised dialogue, atmosphere becoming more important than story, panning and zooming, complex female characters) for the first time.
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14	----
15	!!This film has examples of the following tropes:
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17	* AbhorrentAdmirer:
18	** Dr. Stevenson, an old friend of her parents who Frances socializes with, propositions her, but she turns him down.
19	--->'''Frances''': I don't find him attractive...[[StinkSnub he smells like an old man]].
20	** Frances is this to the Boy as well.
21	* AllThereInTheManual: One of the film's posters has the tagline "How far will a 32 year-old virgin go to possess a 19 year-old boy?" The film itself doesn't quite spell out the age or sexuality of Frances that specifically.
22	* ArcWords: "I want you to make love to me."
23	* DisposableSexWorker: [[spoiler: Sylvia]]
24	* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: Frances has just committed a brutal murder, descended into psychosis, and has trapped the Boy in her apartment. Whatever she has planned for the Boy, things will not end well for him.]]
25	* DraftDodging: Nina's boyfriend Nick is an American who moved to Vancouver to avoid the draft, though you only learn this from a couple snarky remarks the Boy makes about him (calling him "the war hero" and telling him "my country's not at war").
26	* EmotionlessGirl: Frances, for the most part.
27	* {{Fanservice}}: The Boy is nude for a good part of the film, but the film uses several devices to avoid showing too much, like shots of him from the back, CensorSuds in the bath scenes, the ModestyBedsheet and the ModestyTowel (even though there's no good reason to cover himself with a towel when he's in the apartment alone). Nina gets some brief topless shots, along with ToplessnessFromTheBack and, again, CensorSuds.
28	* FemaleGaze: One online critic has argued that the depiction of the Boy falls under this trope. Not only does Frances objectify him, but by never revealing his name the film does it as well. Though it was directed by a man, the screenplay was written by a woman (Gillian Freeman).
29	* TheFilmOfTheBook: Adapted from a 1965 novel of the same name by Richard Miles.
30	* IdleRich: Frances doesn't seem to have a job and apparently inherited a good chunk of money from her parents.
31	* InTheStyleOf: Creator/RomanPolanski, Creator/IngmarBergman and, more distantly, Creator/AlfredHitchcock all clearly influenced Creator/RobertAltman here, along with his own SignatureStyle beginning to emerge.
32	* IncestSubtext: The Boy and Nina have a relationship overflowing with this. The scene where she disrobes and gets into a bath while he's sitting nearby, then drags him into the tub with her especially stands out.
33	-->'''Nina''': ''(to the Boy, while writhing topless on a bed after the bath)'' I wish you weren't my brother...Do you wish I wasn't your sister?
34	* IntoxicationEnsues: The Boy gives Frances some cookies his sister made, but she doesn't know they have marijuana in them. It loosens her up a bit.
35	* MaskOfSanity [[spoiler: Frances just seems repressed and awkward for most of the movie, but turns psychotic at the end.]]
36	* MistakenForGay: When she goes to procure a prostitute for the Boy, everyone assumes Frances is a lesbian (her explanations that it's "[[IHaveThisFriend for a friend]]" only increase the suspicion).
37	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: The pimp in the RedLightDistrict has a huge, long beard that makes him resemble Garth Hudson from Music/TheBand.
38	* NoNameGiven:
39	** We never learn the name of the Boy.
40	** The man Frances meets in the RedLightDistrict is just called "The Rounder" in the credits (but in an easy-to-miss moment he says his name is Murph, which would actually make him TheDanza as he's played by Creator/MichaelMurphy).
41	* OldMaid: Frances doesn't seem particularly old (Creator/SandyDennis was 31 when she played her), but she's not getting any younger, is unmarried, and extremely lonely.
42	* RedLightDistrict: Frances ventures into one to find a prostitute for the Boy.
43	* ThirdPersonPerson: During their awkward attempt at lovemaking, Sylvia the prostitute keeps asking the Boy "Don't you like Sylvia?"
44	* TrojanGauntlet: Frances goes to a birth control clinic in anticipation of seducing the Boy. She's profusely uncomfortable, in part because of the frank talk about sex from the other women in the waiting room. When she's asked why she wants birth control, Frances lies and says she's about to get married.
45	* VillainProtagonist: Frances, though her villainy doesn't get fully established until the last act.
46	* TheVoiceless: The Boy. [[spoiler: Though he finally [[SuddenlyVoiced breaks his silence]] with Frances in a case of OOCIsSeriousBusiness.]]
47	* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Frances has a peculiar Mid-Atlantic accent that seems out of place for western Canada, except there are some hints that her parents were English (her parents' old friends who attend the dinner party are mostly English). Still, she's played by Nebraska native Sandy Dennis (who ''did'' have a reputation for throwing weird little quirks into her acting, though).
48	* WholePlotReference: It's more-or-less a gender-flipped version of ''Literature/TheCollector'' infused with elements of ''Film/{{Persona}}'' (with Frances as Alma and the Boy as Elisabet).

Context Film / ThatColdDayInThePark