Amici amanti

Tom (Griffin Dunne) has a wife who is a health nut, a fashion nut, and just an overall nut. He wants a divorce but ends up nagging instead. When his wife goes across the border to Mexico for some bizarre medical treatment, he meets another woman named Marty at a get together. She's the one reading a book in a private corner of the house. She's attractive but sullen, Tom thinks. However, he runs into her again some weeks later and feels a strong pull in her direction. Marty, a laboratory worker, has just gotten out of a long, dismal relationship; she is not inclined to start something new. Tom is not deterred. Suddenly, his wife returns. Let the fun begin? The only reason this film does not totally collapse is because of Griffin Dunne. His looks and comedic expressions are always worthy, even in a film saddled with a clichéd and very amateurish script. And the pace! This movie moves along like a geriatric and blind snail with an ingrown toenail. The costumes are pretty dismal, too, even though the viewer knows Marty is trying to look less than attractive to halt Tom's attentions. BUT, if you are a perennially hopeless romantic or a Dunne fan, well, then, go ahead and fish this one out of the bottom row, in the far corner of the video store. You will find something to like in an mostly drab film.

... and memories are all I have of it since it seems to have disappeared from the earth sometime in the last thirty years. I saw it last in 1985 when it was commonly shown on The Movie Channel from 1984-1985. It basically details the slow development of a romantic relationship between two people - Tom Christo (Griffin Dunne) and Marty Fenton (Maria Chibas). First you get a little background on these two. You see Tom, trying to hold his fragile marriage together with Leslie, his wife, but she is just too flaky to even get the concept of a marriage much less the fact that she is in one. She ultimately leaves. Marty has been burned too, and she and Tom meet at a party one night. They hit it off but are reticent to start anything new, so they keep each other company, but basically keep it platonic although they do feel the tugs of mutual attraction because they don't want to mess up a good thing - friendship. Just as things look like they might take a turn to the less platonic, Tom's wife Leslie reappears on the scene. Now what? I'll let you watch and find out, but good luck with that since this has never been out on DVD, VHS, and nobody has even bothered to put it out on youtube.

Another reviewer called it slow, but I think of it as deliberate, trying to really give one the feel of what it is like to be single in ones' 20's in modern times in which you do have a past and thus at least some emotional baggage, and you don't want to mess up your future by getting in yet another dead end relationship. I also remember really liking the cinematography and the sound in particular. The fact that this was a low budget independent film means there probably wasn't a lot of money for expensive technology, but I thought it added realism to a movie that already seemed very real to me, a woman who was at the same stage of life as Marty Fenton's character was when I saw this film 30 years ago.