This was Nicolas Roeg's last job as cinematographer before becoming a director. Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum points out that it was on Petulia "that Roeg can be said to have arrived at many of the rudiments of style and structure that characterize his own, subsequent films, the first of which was Performance. An essential part of this manner is a form of rapid and fragmented, kaleidoscopic cross-cutting between diverse strands in a narrative tapestry, an approach that creates meaning largely through unexpected juxtapositions. By and large, it is a wide-ranging, impressionistic method which can make a relatively simple plot multilayered and complex, and an already difficult plot a series of puzzles and mazes."
