The Beloved

Raquel Welch gets stuck with a role here which provides no range, no emotion, no expression, and very little dialogue. The picture, drably set in a peasant village on a Greek island, has an unhappily married woman and her husband, a whiny field worker, torn apart when the husband's estranged best friend returns home and sexually satisfies the wife. There is one dance scene where Raquel flashes her panties (and I loved all that chestnut hair falling across her shoulders), but this low-budget drama has nothing else interesting to draw upon (even the locals are made to seem dull). MGM financed this fiasco, but after taking one look at it, they nixed plans for an American release (it did play in the U.K. and several other countries as "Sin"). A low-end film distribution company released it briefly to theaters in 1979 as "Restless", and that title stuck when Vidmark put it out on video in 1987. "Lifeless" might have been more apropos. NO STARS from ****

The subject of this film is passion; unfortunately, it is a film remarkably devoid of passion, despite its scenario that offers illicit love, jealousy and murder, and its location, set and filmed upon Cyprus, utilizing a cast that includes Greek Cypriots as supporting players and extras, and as well that splendid quality of light for which the island is noted, showcased here by cinematographer Marcello Gatti. Richard Johnson portrays Orestes, returning to his village following an absence of 15 years, to receive a bequest from his recently deceased father, and where he promptly begins an amour with the wife, Elena (Raquel Welch), of a long-time friend, she being very bored with an unrewarding existence, but their affair is suspected, leading to a grotesquely senseless climax for a film marked throughout with stylistic excesses. Actors generally relish taking on roles that appear atypical for them, but in this work some of the casting is simply too quaint, a suspension of disbelief beggared by attempts to accept Johnson as a turbulent Greek, poorly made up Flora Robson as Cypriot materfamilias, and especially Jack Hawkins as Eastern Orthodox priest, while ever decorative Welch plays herself, and the direction of Yorgo Pan Cosmatos checks a potential perception of believability in a viewer dealing with an overly episodic storyline.

This film is set and filmed in Cyprus which is on the continent of Europe just like France is on the continent of Europe and Spain is on the continent of Europe etc. And I wonder how far Cyprus is from France and Spain and also Raquel Welch and Renato Romano's characters as children were played by Raquel Welch's 2 children, Damon and Tahnee Welch who were both born a city in Southern California south of Los Angeles and north of Mexico called San Diego which means they were both born near Sea World, the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the San Diego Zoo except it was a few years before Sea World and the San Diego Wild Animal Park first opened and many years after the San Diego Zoo first opened and I guess the reason Raquel's character as a child was played by her daughter, Tahnee was because of how much Tahnee looks like her mother, Raquel.

A very faithful adaptation of Emile Zola's THERESE RAQUIN set on a remote Greek isle and quite ambitious if not entirely successful. Raquel Welch plays a rural peasant who's extramarital lust leads to murder but her contemporary beauty (flared nostrils, lustrous mane, and blindingly white teeth) end up a barrier to the suspension of disbelief and the lady's histrionics aren't always up to the task, either -especially when clinging to the legs of her dead husband's paralyzed mother, begging for forgiveness. On the plus side, there's able assistance from such experienced thesps as Flora Robson, Jack Hawkins, and Richard Johnson to keep things moving in the right direction. Not half as bad as I thought it would be.