THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN (59)

Directed by: Joseph Losey (1975)

Starring: Glenda Jackson, Michael Caine, Helmut Berger

The Pitch: A middle-class Englishwoman holidaying in Baden-Baden meets a man who later invites himself to her home in England, where her husband is writing a script about adultery.

Theo Sez: Elegant, impishly funny but insubstantial, one of those films that feel like they're going to be unforgettable but then simply evaporate as the closing credits start to roll. The titular heroine is left deliberately a little vague - we first see her blurred and out-of-focus, reflected in a train window against a background of imposing (and in-focus) mountains, and we often see her reflected in mirrors or in the mirror-images of her husband's fantasies about her : the point is that she's disconnected from reality without quite knowing why (she's romantic, says someone, "because she wants everything"), listing all the good things in her life yet fully expecting disaster to strike at any moment. The film is more reminiscent of co-writer Tom Stoppard's sparklingly witty plays than director Losey's rather doleful movie puzzles - though he does a notably fine job of gliding his camera gracefully through the material - with lively banter, perfectly-chiselled one-liners and a general air of verbal legerdemain ; it's fun to watch, in a rarefied way. Unfortunately it never builds into anything properly dramatic - storywise it just kind of trickles away - nor does it retain its mysteries in the manner of e.g. the same year's THE PASSENGER, a less entertaining but more memorable film. It's not cryptic - by the end you have a fairly good idea what it was trying to say ; it's just that you wonder if it was worth the effort.