All the other reviews here indicate this relatively little-known film was a big hit in India, which is surprising in that it has much more nudity and sex scenes (however tame, relatively speaking) than I thought were tolerated there. Maybe censorship standards were briefly relaxed in the late 1960s? If you cut all the sensual stuff here, you wouldn't have much of a movie left.
Anyway, this is an interesting enough time capsule midway between arthouse drama and sexploitation thriller, with two well-off couples fatefully meeting at a Greek seaside resort. The older pair are a Swedish husband and wife who feel more like a self-important mid-career academic and his secretary/assistant--he's a pompous psychiatrist and she clearly barely tolerates his officiousness these days. The younger duo are Italians who can hardly help but catch their eye, as they are extremely attractive, openly amorous, and prone to get in public spats. The two couples sort of become "friends," in the way of short-lived fellow vacationers, though there are language barriers, and each side sort of judges the other. Nonetheless, the vitality and eroticism of the younger ones inevitably causes some envious (as well as stimulating) friction, leading rather predictably if not very convincingly to violence.
It's a good-looking, well-cast movie that's fine as far as it goes--and it must have felt like it went pretty far for 1969--but doesn't really have much psychological depth. In the end, there's nothing going on here beyond the stereotypes of frustrated older couple jealous of the young and carefree. Both couples have secrets (involving infidelity), but in the end the morality is simplistic generation-gap stuff, turning on irrational fury at the sexual freedom of youth. It's interesting if also a little off-putting that the young woman turns out to be a petulant brat, throwing tantrums over nothing, so we feel little for her current attachment--even less than we feel for the older pair, who are trapped in their marriage but no longer like (let alone love) each other, if they ever did. Maybe 55 years ago it was titillating enough to glimpse the failure of outwardly respectable relationships, but now it's just kinda dull, at least at this superficial level of insight and character writing.
Bibi Andersson is always compelling, though it feels like she's stuck playing a more trite version of figures she played for Bergman and others. Giuliano Gemma is a magnetic presence, physically and otherwise, faring best among the actors here at suggesting a whole developed personality we only grasp bits of; the other two leads are fine within the confines of their roles.
Unlike the similar dynamic in later films like "The Comfort of Strangers" or "Speak No Evil," the notion of one couple "preying" after another doesn't really turn into a full-blown suspense plot. Indeed, the main problem with "Blow Hot, Blow Cold" now is that there's not quite enough going on----watching these beautiful, variably repressed people at leisure in pretty places has a certain voyeuristic appeal, but soon it's clear there won't be much urgency of any kind, narrative or psychological. It's the classic case of an intriguing premise that promises much, but ends up feeling like a short story over-stretched to the screen equivalent of a novel's length.
