Intimate Encounters

Raunchy TV movie starring Donna Mills and James Brolin

When this film was broadcast on American television on September 28, 1986, Donna Mills, born in 1940, was at the peak of her television career. Her Abby Fairgate Cunningham Ewing from the PrimeTime soap KNOTS LANDING was, despite her bad lies and notorious schemes (she had just shaken off her responsibility for the kidnapping of Valene Ewing's (Joan Van ARK) twins in the series and rose like a phoenix from the ashes) incredibly popular with US audiences. So it naturally fit into the picture that she was allowed to play a good housewife who discovered her nymphomaniac tendencies almost overnight and then lived them out to the fullest. Of course, somewhat demurely so that the television viewers weren't too frightened! James Brolin, who was the star womanizer in the series HOTEL in those days, can be seen as her cuckolded husband. Cicely Tyson, Mitchell Anderson and Michael Greene also star. The uncrowned queen of horror classics, Veronica Cartwright (The Birds, Alien), is also on board.

Interesting memory of the eighties with TV stars of the time!

This movie is about a married woman who keeps having fantasies about younger men. The fantasies take place in different background settings (park, bedroom). Her fantasies go so deep until there's a point when she gets into a car accident. One day she was washing dishes in the kitchen and she started having the fantasies until the house started flooding. At the end she tried getting help. If you like having fantasies, then watch this movie.

Bored housewife Donna Mills is frustrated by husband James Brolin's lack of attention, so she indulges in sexual fantasies about other men. Her fantasies are accompanied by light FM music that makes the scenes reminiscent of a soft porn flick, except for the fact that not a hint of flesh below her neck is exposed.

It's difficult to feel sympathy for Donna Mills' character here. She's a knockout, and she has a stable of handsome young studs who flirt with her throughout the movie and appear only too willing to take Brolin's place. Mills' concerns around getting older are expressed when she stumbles during an attempted cartwheel. Pretty lame!

The dialog is appalling, marked by inane psychobabble. The only scenes that register convincingly are toward the end when Brolin rages over his wife's infidelity.

The casting director was obviously doing his job, however, ensuring that this effort is at least good to look at. Just be sure to turn down the sound!

This unintentionally amusing mid-80s TV movie is based on the premise that sex bomb Donna Mills (in a mostly appalling wardrobe throughout) is a neglected housewife, pining for her sexy past as a cheerleader. She escapes her empty life by fantasising about random sexual encounters with one of the many attractive men she comes across, finally giving into her fantasies and indulging in a bit on the side, although all she really wants is to reignite the flames of passion with her boring husband James Brolin.

There are many laughable aspects to this film, Mills' first foray into co-producing (later, following her departure from Knots Landing, she found great success as a trashy TV movie queen starring in mostly issue-of-the-week melodramas through most of the '90s - she usually played a victim of some sort, clearly determined to wash her hands of the wonderfully wicked and entertaining conniver she played for so long on Knots). Funniest are the drawn-out fantasy sequences, filmed as though they are meant to be soft-core porn (wind and smoke machines, backlighting, porno music), but as this is a network TV movie the scenes are all very chaste and ultimately not very sexy at all. The most amusing (and bizarre) scene has Mills taking a walk on the wild side downtown among the spiky-haired punks (complete with Robert Palmer soundtrack).

Less laughable is the dreadful dialogue that the cardboard characters are forced to utter (pity poor Cicely Tyson as the mandatory psycho-analyst, or Veronica Cartwright as the mandatory best friend, or even pre-Babs James Brolin with that daytime soap style of clenched fist anger.)

Of course, as in all of these sorts of films, we learn that all problems can be solved through psycho-therapy and then the film just becomes silly, as we explore, briefly, the reasons for Mills' "shocking" behaviour (as if it can't just be that she wants a good shag!)

Vacuous.

This is an interesting movie. Donna Mills plays the part so well. She is the perfect soccer mom but in real life her body takes over her mine and she has cheap encounters. She plays the part so well. She looks so well - mid 40's during the movie and she could pass for a college girl - which she actually is ( a mom back in school). Wow - watch this one when it comes on TV.