Play It as It Lays

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Play It as It Lays

U.S., 1972

Joan Didion’s Hollywood novel Play It as It Lays was adapted by Frank Perry, based on a script she penned with her husband John Gregory Dunne. The film proceeds as a kind of hypnotic regression. Its scenes pulse between the memories of an actress played by Tuesday Weld—of poolside parties and clandestine abortions, of visits with her institutionalized daughter and languid hours wiled away in a furnished apartment—cohering into a distinctive and underappreciated vision of Los Angeles anomie.

35mm, color, 99 min. Director: Frank Perry. Screenwriter: John Gregory Dunne. With: Tuesday Weld, Anthony Perkins, Tammy Grimes.