Changement de saisons

Anthony Hopkins plays a University professor engaged in an affair with a young student(Bo Derek, the perfectly cast "10"). His wife(played by Shirley MacLaine)finds out about it, but rather than divorce him, instead has an affair of her own with a young carpenter who just so happens to be doing work in their home. Hopkins is none to pleased by this, yet the four of them nonetheless go on a skiing trip together at their vacation cabin, where relationships will come to a head, since their college age daughter also arrives with her boyfriend...

Good actors cannot do much with such mundane material. Its attempts to be "modern" about the morality of affairs is awkward and unconvincing, and the film is mostly dreary and unsatisfying, though Bo Derek lights up every scene she is in(especially in the hot tub!)

Great "find" in video stores boasts a really good script regarding the sexual strayings of a mid-life couple. Anthony Hopkins plays the philandering husband (Bo Derek the young hot tart) and Shirley MacLaine plays the wife who takes up with a lover of her own. This topic is now "hot" again what with Oscar winner "American Beauty" not to mention the whole Monica-Clinton affair. Don't let Bo Derek's name keep you from watching this film (and why should it when Anthony Hopkins and Shirley MacLaine are the leads?) Bo does the "Bo" thing early on (in a hot tub no less) so this film really does offer the best of all worlds. Should be watched with another Shirley MacLaine movie with a very similar plot that was released the same year (1980) called "Loving Couples" (with James Coburn the philandering husband and a young Susan Sarandon the young hot tart). They were released between "Being There" (1979) and "Terms of Endearment" (1983) so if you are wondering what Shirley MacLaine did between her two very different roles in those films here's your answer. Shirley is charming. Great entertainment.

Advertised as a wacky marital sex romp (with allusions to wife-swapping), this Erich Segal script surprises by being a mostly sobering look at a marriage between two middle-agers (Shirley MacLaine and Anthony Hopkins) which has faltered and can't really be rectified. Released alongside a spate of similar middle-age-crazy comedy-dramas (including MacLaine's "Loving Couples", which she made back-to-back with "Seasons"), this one has the added appeal of seeing serious-minded Hopkins romancing Bo Derek (fresh off her triumph in "10" and usually out of her clothes). The writing is often achingly 'cute', with hardly a wink to the audience to let us know co-writer Segal is in on the joke. However, the more thoughtful moments (integrated unobtrusively by director Richard Lang) offer some insight into what breaks up a marital union, and both MacLaine and Hopkins have strong scenes. ** from ****

This film was well written by Erich Segal of Love Story fame and by the producer, Martin Ransohoff. It is a comedic farce, but it is also touching and poignant and the characters are all quite likable and well developed. One reviewer didn't see the point to it all, but the point was that life does not end with marriage and middle age. We all have our temptations and we do the best we can with the complexities that confront us. No character in this film meant harm to any other and the result of each person's actions were not to be tidied up with easy answers. The consequences of the decisions made by the husband, the wife, the husbands girlfriend, the wife's boyfriend, and the girlfriend's father were left for us to ponder. Only the daughter, with the idealism of youth, could blissfully move on without considering what bends in the road she might face in her future. Anthony Hopkins, Shirley MacLane and the other cast members do a fine job with the material. I liked it very much and strongly recommend it.

It is sad that a film with good actor/actress as Hopkins and MacLaine did not perform well as one may expect. They were husband and wife, the first one a professor who falls in love with one of his girl- students. He simply informed his wife of this event as if nothing would happen, but this was a mistake. His wife decided to have a young lover, and all four informed went together to the mountain in holidays!!! Only in films this phenomenon can be seen. Then their daughter is also coming to the mountain with his boy-friend and his future father-in- law, who immediately falls in love with the mother of his future daughter-in-law. I think that sometimes the director wanted to make the film more comic because as a drama it was lost. The final result is not the best.