Track 29

Described by director Nicholas Roeg as "marvelous trash," this psychological black comedy comes from the wicked pen of British screenwriter Dennis Potter (Dreamchild). Theresa Russell plays Linda Henry, a frustrated housewife who longs for a child to replace the one she gave up when she was raped as a teenager. Her husband Henry Henry (marvelously portrayed by Christopher Lloyd) is a doctor whose only interest is model trains. So, Henry has his trains (and a fling with comic Sandra Bernhardt as a nurse who obligingly spanks Henry's bum while he listens to pre-recorded train sounds), and Linda has doodley. Until, Martin (Gary Oldman) comes along, claiming to be her long lost child, and wishing to reclaim the childhood he was denied. Except ...about a third of the way into the film, viewers are let in on a little secret: Martin is an illusion, a figment of Linda's fertile imagination. And, in a visually sumptuous sequence, Martin decides he doesn't like model trains. Track 29 is not for the general viewer. But for the patron who likes a change of pace from the adolescent comedies and heroic sports stories and endlessly uninventive sci-fi fodder that rolls out of Tinsel Town, this will be an enjoyable, albeit strange, trip. Lloyd is perfect as Henry, Russell gives her best to what is essentially a frustrated Tennessee Williams southern belle role, and Oldman has a downright gleefully destructive time as Martin the intellectual brat. Recommended.