Performance 1970

Chas Devlin is part of an East London gang led by the ruthless Harry Flowers. Chas is known for his brutal efficiency and a taste for violence, and his casual, rough liaisons reflect a world where loyalty is thin and danger is constant. When Flowers intends to seize a betting shop owned by Joey Maddocks, he forbids Chas from getting involved, wary that Chas’s tangled history with Maddocks could ignite trouble. Chas resents the order and later humiliates Maddocks, who retaliates by wrecking Chas’s apartment and attacking him; in the ensuing confrontation, Chas shoots Maddocks and packs a suitcase to vanish.

With Flowers making it clear he won’t offer protection, Chas decides to slip away to the countryside, hoping to disappear. But luck or fate nudges him toward Notting Hill Gate, where he overhears a musician talking about going on tour and leaving his rented room. He arrives, adopts a new persona, and claims to be a fellow performer, though the alias he uses—Johnny Dean—is a deception designed to gain entry.

There he meets Pherber, a woman living with Turner, a reclusive former rock star who has “lost his demon,” and Lucy, with whom Turner shares a non-possessive and bisexual ménage à trois. A child named Lorraine floats in and out of the house, adding a fragile brightness to the tense atmosphere. At first, Chas eye-rolls at Turner, but the two men begin to influence each other in unexpected ways. Pherber and Turner press him to reveal what makes him function so effectively within his world.

To accelerate the process, Pherber tricks him with a psychedelic mushroom, and Chas accuses them of poisoning him. In a hallucinogenic haze, he experiments with clothing and identity, even slipping into feminine clothes. The experience broadens his empathy, and he forms a surprising, caring bond with Lucy.

Before any of this unfolds, he had phoned Tony, a trusted friend who calls him “Uncle,” to help him slip out of the country. Flowers and his henchmen use Tony to trace Chas to Turner’s flat, and they allow him to go upstairs to gather his things. When Chas tells Turner and Pherber that he is leaving, the tension snaps: he shoots and kills Turner and is then escorted into Flowers’s car. As the vehicle pulls away, Chas still wears the feminine clothes and wig, but his face is identical to Turner’s, a brutal final turn of identity and fate.