Torpid Last Fling

Since most men and women cannot know the hour of their death, they fritter away hours and hours of their lives. But suppose one is young and knows one's death is imminent? The idea that animated Director Vittorio De Sica in making A Place for Lovers was to find the one life imperative that possesses the force of death. That imperative is love -- life at its most vibrant intensity.

If the film he made had not proved to be woefully inept, its theme might have made it grand, tragic and compellingly romantic. As it is, it merely gives Faye Dunaway a chance for a last, torpid, tuberculous fling. TB may or may not be the unnamed mortal disease that she has. She behaves pretty much like a willful child playing hooky from the sanatorium. As her erotic partner, Marcello Mastroianni displays all the zest of a man summoned up for tax evasion. He appears to be lipreading his English, although the script seems to find the language just about as alien as Mastroianni does. The five scriptwriters who supposedly worked on the film must have spent enough time at the water-cooler to flood a camel. The only smidgin of plot is that Dunaway makes a late abortive attempt at suicide, something the film successfully achieves after about ten minutes.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.