CREEMEDIA
Some paths should never cross. When Milena (Theresa Russell) plants her formidable leg in a doorway to prevent Dr. Alex (Art Garfunkel) from leaving a party, it’s all over for the curly-top research psychoanalyst; he had the right idea earlier, when he quipped that if they never met, they could imagine it would turn out perfectly.
CREEMEDIA
Bogue Roeg?
BAD TIMING / A SENSUAL OBSESSION Directed by Nicolas Roeg (World Northal)
by Mitchell Cohen
Some paths should never cross. When Milena (Theresa Russell) plants her formidable leg in a doorway to prevent Dr. Alex (Art Garfunkel) from leaving a party, it’s all over for the curly-top research psychoanalyst; he had the right idea earlier, when he quipped that if they never met, they could imagine it would turn out perfectly. Clearly, this Milena, prone to drinking, doling outsloppy kisses, and espousing flapper philosophy (and keeping a husband over the border), is too much for Alex. Their Viennese romance is doomed: he wants to whisk her away to N.Y.C. and matrimony; she wants to ha-cha-cha.
Director Nicolas Roeg, working from a script by Yale Udoff, takes this tale of irreconcilable differences and turns it, as is his practice, into an elegant-looking, coolly distracted and disjointed narrative.