Oversolemn psychological thriller, by Alan J. Pakula. Kristy McNichol is still very much Daddy's Little Girl despite her maturity as a flutist. ("You have the great gift for improvisation," her teacher tells her. "How would you like to turn my trio into a quartet?") She also happens to be "one in ten thousand" in her ability to overcome the physical paralysis of the dream state and to "act out" her dreams as they're happening. The heroine's father fixation and overall passivity with men, though hardly likely to win her any citations from Ms. Magazine, give her a distinctive personality; and the actress, who is not exactly the Rita Tushingham of the Eighties but is no glamour girl either, gives her an unassailable genuineness. The dream scenes are more of a stumbling block, full of slow motion and low angles, long corridors and towering doors, odd costumes and soprano choruses. And the pivotal recurring nightmare is rather like an indelible memory than an unfolding dream, a lump of clay that is always the same but subject to alteration. Some mild chills occur when the movie ventures into new frontiers of dream research -- or in other words, over the adjoining border of science fiction. With Ben Masters and Paul Shenar. (1986) — Duncan Shepherd
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