Auf der Suche nach Liebe

I first saw this over twenty years ago and it stayed in my mind ever since; they never seemed to play this film on TV in my area and a VHS tape was difficult to find. I finally got one on E-Bay a year ago. I've always been a science fiction fan and my favorite sub-genre was parallel worlds. The original writer (Wyndham) and screenwriters got all the basics correct - certain events in the past transpired differently on this parallel Earth, resulting in a very similar, yet strikingly different world. But what caught me off guard was the romance attached to the story; I don't know, maybe the British storytellers just know how to do this sort of stuff better, but the tale taps into the soul of anyone with just a bit of the romantic in them. I never got that sense of romance, in such a strong dose, in any other film; the similar "Somewhere in Time" with Chris Reeve comes to mind, but it's not even a contest. When Joan Collins first walks into the room, I don't think you even need to be a heterosexual male - you are just swept away on the spot. Tom Bell is also very good as the hero; he sort of stumbles along on this fantastic journey he's been flung into and he soon embraces the entire cosmic appeal of what fate has given to him - a rare gift, as it turns out.

The genre of SF romances is pretty slim, and well done ones even slimmer still. The only two that leap immediately to mind are "Quest For Love" and "Late For Dinner". They both rank among my favorite films. For the romantically inclined, both are also worth at least two hankies (one reason I never watch either with anyone other than my wife).

Joan Collins looks superb (as usual) and gives an excellent, understated performance (hardly usual!) Rather than her typical shrew or strumpet (I'm trying hard to avoid adjectives that would violate the guidelines), she is a genuinely warm and sympathetic character. Aside from the voodoo that transports the protagonist into a parallel universe, the SF aspects are well constructed and don't overwhelm what is, at its core, a touching love story. The parallel universe plot is a much more effective metaphor in this case than the typical time travel gimmick common to most "what if" films such as this.

The pacing could be better and the script could have benefitted from one more revision, but it's still quite satisfying overall.

P.S. Apparently, like "Late For Dinner", "Quest For Love" is currently out of print on home video. I therefore feel fortunate to have both (QFL on Beta and LFD on VHS), so there are real official copies in existence which a diligent search might turn up.

I saw this film many years ago on a rainy Saturday afternoon. JOAN COLLINS is wonderful if you liked the "CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER" episode of the original STAR TREK and don't need special effects to enjoy a great story you will like this film. Unfortunately I have not been able to find it on T.V. since. It is not available on video. If anyone out there has a copy they made from broadcast on T.V. or knows when it will be on again please e-mail me. I am also interested in any similar time travel/fantasy type movies and have a small collection I am willing to share. Thank you.

To my considerable annoyance, every time this movie has been shown on TV I haven't had my VCR ready to record. I've probably seen it about three or four times, on the proverbial rainy afternoons when little-regarded films are broadcast. It's been described by other IMDb reviewers as a sci-fi love story, and it certainly is that. But it's also a rare foray for a mainstream movie into counterfactual history. (In this respect it resembles novels such as Kingsley Amis's "The Alteration", Keith Roberts' "Pavane" and Robert Harris's "Fatherland" more than it resembles other movies.) Colin Bell, a physicist, finds himself in a parallel version of our world after an experiment that goes wrong. The Second World War has not happened, and in all kinds of subtle and intriguing ways society is less advanced. The course of his own life has been drastically different as well: he is a playwright and novelist, not a physicist; he attended Oxford (arts and humanities-based) not Cambridge (science-based); his best friend (played by Denholm Elliot) has not lost his arm in WW2; most significantly, while single in OUR world, he discovers that he is, albeit unfaithfully, married in this one.

I'll concede that the conclusion of the movie IS rushed, but the rest of it is so superbly executed that I'm prepared to overlook this. Of course not all of the implications of this bizarre scenario are investigated; how could they be in a 90-minute movie? I'd agree with the other IMDb reviewer, who remarked that OUR world is limned far less vividly than its doppelganger. But this is surely as it should be; after all, we KNOW our world.

The unanswered question that has nagged me every time I have seen the movie is: Where is the other Colin Trafford? Surely the arrogant, womanising drunk isn't on the loose in our world, wreaking havoc in the the domain of research physics? (I think we're meant to assume that he's temporarily inhabiting his double's comatose body in hospital.) What is highly ingenious, and could pass unnoticed, such is the subtlety of its handling, is the way in which, although we never actually see him, we infer from people's reactions exactly what sort of person the other Colin Trafford was. (I'm reminded of the scene in the original "Nutty Professor" in which Buddy Love is introduced; we see him, at first, entirely in terms of other people's reactions.)

We still seem to be too near to the 60s and 70s (psychologically if not chronologically) for people to overlook the now-quaint fashions. Come on, though! Even the 70s are thirty years ago now. We're not surprised to see people in Edwardian times, or the 1930s, dressed in radically different clothes. Why should it strike as odd (and funny) that people more than a generation ago inhabited a universe more different from ours than the one that physicist Colin Trafford finds himself in? Every time I read someone dismiss a movie because the fashions are dated I want to scream! Such a lack of historical perspective means that there's a very real danger that anyone much under 40 or so will not be able to observe the subtle, but very real, contrast between the "real" world in "Quest For Love", and its slightly more old-fashioned twin, and will thus miss out on an important layer of the movie's meaning.

Intriguing sci-fi love story about a physicist (Tom Bell) who ends up in a parallel universe after a scientific experiment goes awry. At first, the film is a wonderful fish-out-of-water tale as Bell slowly realizes his predicament and reluctantly assumes the identity of his parallel counterpart Colin Trafford (an arrogant, much-maligned playwright). However, the tale gets even more complicated when Bell falls in love with Trafford's flamboyantly unhappy wife Ottile (Joan Collins in a surprisingly subtle performance).

Although the film's narrative often seems like a discarded plot from the daytime soap Dark Shadows, this is an inventive, well-written and (more importantly) splendidly acted drama. It's definitely worth a look if you happen to come across it.