Film review: Shampoo (1975)

This is a film that is very seventies but set across the day or so leading up to, and the day after the  1968 election (which, of course, would be in November, but as this is Los Angeles, it's still warm and sunny).  This is probably significant, because Nixon was elected, which sort of sets a period at the end of a period of peace-and-love, and the film documents the collapse of the way of life of its putative protagonist, George Rounby, played by the ridiculously-coiffed (as befits his profession) Warren Beatty.

Beatty's character seems like an only-slightly-exaggerated version of the lothario he was rumored to be in real life, and as he co-wrote the script (along with Chinatown scribe Robert Towne), that is also no doubt intentional.  George is something of a cypher: all the women want to sleep with him and he seems to accommodate them rather than actively pursue them.  In the course of the movie he sleeps with his girlfriend Jill (Goldie Hawn), his former girlfriend Jackie (Julie Christie in a ridiculous wig),

Felicia, the wife of the man (Lester - played by Jack Warden, of Twelve Angry Men fame) that Jackie is currently the mistress of (Lee Grant), and her daughter (Carrie Fisher!)

I'm not a huge fan of Beatty's mumbly acting style, but you certainly can't accuse him of macho posturing in this film where, as I say, the women in his life are completely in charge (even if they'd rather he wasn't rotating through them), and he gets accuse of being a "faggot" by various characters because of his profession.  The plot, what there is of it, is George trying ineffectually to secure a loan to finance setting up on his own, as he chafes under the thumb of the owner of the salon he currently works at (in Beverly Hills, natch).  Meanwhile Jill pursues a role in a film to be directed by a former commercials director, Jackie wants Lester to take her out, and directs George to ask Lester for the loan (after he is refused by a banker who clearly thinks him entirely too flakey), and Felicia just wants to shag George anywhere and everywhere.  Everyone ends up together at a big party that Lester has arranged as a fundraiser for some (presumably Republican) politician.  Jackie (for whom George is supposed to be acting as a beard so she can attend the same party as Lester and his wife) makes a scene, and George removes her to another party.  Everyone else also ends up there, and George and Jackie are found in flagrante delicto, thus torpedoing George's and Jill's, and (perhaps) Jackie's and Lester's relationships.  Will Jill bed the director instead?  Will Lester have George's kneecaps broken?  Will George's sudden realization that he should be with Jackie be met with a reciprocal reaction?
Very much of its time (actually, both of them), and (Jami observes) very like The Graduate (it even has a (very minimal) Paul Simon soundtrack) in that its protagonist is lost and rudderless in a world that doesn't understand him.  But like Benjamin, you sometimes wish somebody would just grab George and shake him. However, he is a little bit of an idiot savant, because he actually likes and listens to the women around him (and is able to inform Lester that his daughter really hates her mother).  And he does have SOME principles: