Year: 1973
Cast: George Segal, Glenda Jackson, Paul Sorvino, K Callan, Hildegarde Neil, Cec Linder, Lisa Vanderpump, Michael Elwyn, Mary Barclay, Nadim Sawalha
Director: Melvin Frank
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress (Jackson), Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Original Song
Why do married people have affairs? I get the thrill of doing something different, something forbidden, etc. But this film illustrates just how dangerous it can be trying to keep all those secrets from your spouse.
Steve (George Segal) is a successful businessman, married with two children, while Vickie (Glenda Jackson) is a divorcee, also with two children, who works in the fashion industry. The two of them have a very standard "meet cute" which quickly turns into Steve asking Vickie if she'd like a no-strings-attached fling.
This isn't the first time Steve has done this, it turns out, and in fact, he has places he uses in various cities when he travels, and he invites Vickie to one such place, where she's all for the idea of a casual encounter...but not in the rather mean accommodations Steve has provided. Steve is so eager to go through with it that he arranges a trip to Málaga for the two of them, and pretends the entire thing is a business trip to try and discourage his socialite wife (Hildegarde Neil) from coming along.
I must admit, the truly Herculean efforts he goes through to ensure that she doesn't come with him are hilarious to watch. I won't describe them other than to say they involve a number of phone calls, because honestly this movie is worth a watch and I want you to find it as funny as I did. In fact the first half of this movie is one hilarious scene after another in which absolutely nothing goes right for two people who are increasingly putting more and more effort into their casual affair and gradually losing it more and more.
While the movie never gets truly bad, and in fact, like I said, is worth you watching it yourself, I feel like the first half is where its strengths are. In the second half, things take a turn for the solidly dramatic, which ordinarily wouldn't be so bad, except that it's a pretty sudden tonal shift, and not one I'm sure I believed all that much.
Part of the problem is that I felt like Steve and Vickie were wrong for each other, and the more the movie seemed it wanted me to root for their happiness, the more I wanted them to come to their senses and realize this whole thing just isn't working. Steve "falls in love" with Vickie, which never seems like more than infatuation. Their wrongness for each other made the first half work and the second half seem a bit dishonest. It also should be used as a deterrent for anyone considering an affair themselves.
As you see above, the movie scored a number of Oscar nods, including Best Picture. One that it didn't get was Best Actor for George Segal, and I think he was robbed, personally. Not only does he have a truly wonderful sense of comic timing, the perfect facial expression for each moment, and a rapier wit, but he also manages to come off like a sympathetic everyman despite playing a rich guy looking to cheat on his wife. I feel like Segal carried the movie. I would have nominated him before I would have nominated Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino (I know, heresy) or Robert Redford, and if he had been nominated, I would have considered him a real threat to Jack Lemmon.
But Jackson did get nominated, and in fact, she won. I read that her win was a shock; that most predictions went for Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist or Marsha Mason in Cinderella Liberty. Quite frankly I'm still making up my mind about this category, and as I haven't gotten there yet, I won't elaborate, but I'll say that Jackson's acting style can be summed up in one word; poise. Jackson, an actress I've seen in only two films (and she won an Oscar for both), is statuesque, imperious and deadpan, and it works for her incredibly well. While her range might be in question, what she does with the material here seems exactly what's called for. Matching wits with George Segal, she might not carry the film like he does, but she matches him barb for barb, and is an absolute delight.
As for the film's other nominations, I can't help but feel like it doesn't really belong. It's a romantic dramedy that feels like a dozen others I've seen. While the two leads are splendid, and Michael Elwyn, in a smaller role as Vickie's gay assistant, is so hilarious that I wonder why he didn't have a huge career, the movie itself seems pretty light and inconsequential, especially when compared to its competitors in both categories. I would have given a Best Picture nod to Save the Tiger or Paper Moon in a heartbeat before considering this one. I also don't think it deserved a screenplay nod. What sold this were its two leads.
In many respects, this film reminds me of As Good as it Gets, a film released over 20 years later, featuring two respected actors we know are capable of great performances, but ultimately the film produced is so standard that we wonder why the Oscars seemed to love it; giving it Best Picture and Best Screenplay nods, and winning Best Actress.
It feels like I'm saying it's a good film but it's bad. What I'm really trying to say is that you'll have fun watching it, and the two leads are definitely Oscar-worthy (at least as nominees), but the rest of the film just isn't.
No comments:
Post a Comment