After his wife (Glenda Jackson) returns from a vacation alone in Germany, her writer husband (Michael Caine) becomes obsessed with the idea that she slept with a "poet" who supports himself as a drug smuggler and gigolo (Helmut Berger, who else? It's a European 70s movie). He then attempts to fashion his suspicions into a film script. Life reflects art reflects life reflects ..... well, you get the picture. We're never quite sure if they really did sleep together. Are those flashbacks the husband's imagination? The wife's? Or something that actually occurred? Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. The director Joseph Losey turns what might have been an amusing satire into a portentous glammed up artsy (and not in a good way) piece of pork. The brittle Jackson is miscast as a bourgeois English housewife, Caine's performance is wildly uneven (it may be one of his worst performances) and is there anyone who actually finds the squeamish Berger attractive? Based on the novel by Thomas Wiseman (who shares the screenplay credit with Tom Stoppard). With Kate Nelligan, Michael Lonsdale, Nathalie Delon, Beatrice Romand and Reinhard Kolldehoff.
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