West Coast Premiere Sitting in the dining car of a trainrushing toward London, a prim, brooding middle-aged man suffers avertiginous breakdown. He looks at the two bewildered strangers acrossthe table and politely asks "Am I, by any chance, with you?"From that moment on, Secret Friends becomes an hallucinatory journeyinto the crumpled psyche of John (Alan Bates), a painter of delicatewildflowers whose personal life has gone to seed. Loosely based onPotter's 1986 novel Ticket to Ride, the film traces the brittlebackground of its protagonist, his puritanical upbringing, his troubledmarriage to Helen (Gina Bellman), and his secret friend, a grim (andpossibly murderous) alter ego. The delusional concoction of repressedpersonalities, deadly deeds, and sexual frolicking never allows theviewer the comfort of certainty. At every turn, John's prudish disgustdeluges his encounters with the world of flesh and fondness. Potterdescribed this troubled soul as "a victim of what he himself hascreated, a sexual fantasy that gets out of control. Fantasy should beone of the registered sexually transmitted diseases-which in John'scase, it is."