Friendship's Death

Drawing on his own experiences as a journalist in the Middle East in 1970, Peter Wollen has fashioned a gentle science-fiction fantasy which will surprise those who still see him as an austerely politica! film theorist. Which is not to say that Friendship's Death is not a political film. Set in war-torn Amman, Jordan, during Black September 1970, it tells the story of Sullivan, a front-line news reporter, and his encounter with Friendship, a robot conceived by computers on the distant planet Procyon to simulate a human being and sent to Earth as a peace envoy. A malfunction lands her in Jordan, where she instinctively and intellectually finds herself identifying with the crushed Palestinians, with whom she shares the lack of an identity and a home. The best compliment one can pay Wollen is that this fragile conceit comes across as both credible and touching, while the film as a whole is entertaining and imaginative. (Clyde Jeavons)