A Change of Place is a lovely escape. OK, any chance to look at Rick Springfield is a lovely escape, but this film is really not bad. The shots of Paris don't hurt either. You get enough of Paris to make you long for a week or two there, but it isn't gratuitous. Restraint is the beauty of this film. It certainly could have fallen into the traps that so many of these made-for-TV chick flicks do. But the script and the direction manage artfully to avoid those pit-falls. The plot is more believable than in many made-for-TV films. It doesn't indulge in melodrama. Rick Springfield is a good actor even when he has a bad script, but in this case the dialogue is natural and one cannot help but like Philip, even when he is being curt to the heroine. The characters are not caricatures. Andrea Roth does a nice job playing identical twins without exaggerating the personality differences. Geordie Johnson is really amazing in his portrayal of the menacing Jacques. It had to difficult not to overplay this villain, but Johnson makes Jacques believably threatening without turning him into a preposterous Judith Krantz bad guy. This film is not an iconic dramatic masterpiece, and that is OK because it wasn't meant to be. It is a lovely way to spend a couple of hours. I highly recommend it.
