Amantes em Veneza

Plot (or what there is of it)—Husband Blume is divorced by wife Nina after she catches him philandering. Trouble is he still loves her and spends the rest of the time trying to get her back. So how is true love distinguished from true obsession.

Critic Leonard Maltin calls the movie "self-indulgent" and he's right. It's like writer-director Mazurski has gone off on his own personal tangent and made a movie of it. Segal does manage a role in low-key style that could have easily gone over the top. Too bad there's no hint of his very real comedic skills, which I somehow kept expecting. Also, he may get more close-ups than my favorite puppy. As Nina, Anspach has a different look with her long thin face and cloud of platinum hair. Hers is the more interesting character as she struggles with middle-class conventions like marriage. But what's with Shelley Winters' tacked on role as a grieving divorcée. Perhaps Mazurski was reminding casting directors what an inimitable presence she is.

Arguably, the film's best parts are those reflecting political (the farm workers) and youth culture (the "swingers" meeting place) of the early 1970's. It seems Nina is groping for a life outside the conventional but is emotionally stuck halfway. Anyway, her character is the more interesting of the two. At the same time, Elmo (Kristofferson) appears more like a rootless hippie, while Nina connects with that unconventional side. Even Blume seems attracted when a kind of unconventional threesome forms.

Nonetheless, such deeper themes remain conjectural, while the movie itself over-stretches into a barely entertaining two hours that a graphic rape scene doesn't help. All in all, Mazurski's screenplay may be based on a personal experience that somehow got carried away.

I haven't been able to read anything about this movie that comments about the handsome young man played by Ian Linhart who is seen several times in the Venice scenes. He looks like the young actor, only a few years older, who played the boy Tadzio in 1971 in Visconti's "Death in Venice" who becomes the obsession of an older man. Ian Linhart 's only other role was in Visconti's "Ludwig " in 1973-- the same year as "Blume". He's obviously in this movie for a reason but I can't see the significance

Beverly Hills divorce lawyer Stephen Blume (George Segal) sabotages his marriage by bringing home his secretary and getting caught by his wife Nina (Susan Anspach). He reflects on his self-destructive womanizing love life. He begins a fling with Arlene (Marsha Mason) while Nina starts dating Elmo Cole (Kris Kristofferson).

The 70's had a bunch of these womanizing protagonist and the audience is supposed to be sympathetic. It's probably a response to the free love 60's. Non of these characters are appealing. At best, they are interesting and that's only in moments. I don't know if these characters actually love each other or that they are narcissists loving themselves and their partners only as an accessory to their selves. I certainly don't see this as a social comedy since non of this is actually funny to me. It's a little sad but mostly frustrating. These are not happy people.

"Blume In Love" (1973) begins in Venice, Italy as Blume (George Segal) talks about how this most romantic place changes the way couples think of sex and love while they are visiting. As the movie pushes along Blume talks about his divorce from his ex-wife Nina Blume (Susan Anspach) and his regret from having an extra-marital affair. We also see images of Nina and Blume's honeymoon to Venice. But now Blume is back in Venice on his own after Nina had asked him to leave for a couple of weeks so she could work things out. The rest of the movie contains flashbacks of before and after the divorce.

I have seen one other film by Paul Mazursky [Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)], which was a film that dealt with two couples experimenting in sexual freedom. "Blume In Love" is about a divorce-lawyer named Blume (Segal) who suffers from impotence and despair after he is divorced from his beloved Nina (Anspach). He "can not live without her" he exclaims, and "would rather die if he can't have her back." And dying is something Blume doesn't want, so he has to win her back. He eventually wins her back in an ending that is either ambivalent to the viewer, joyous or they are repulsed by it as was the reviewer before me. It was a very romantic and happy ending, but it was far from realistic

"Blume In Love" is a well-directed film by writer and director Paul Mazursky. The performances by Susan Anspach, George Segal and Kris Kristofferson as Elmo are all wonderful. Kris Kristofferson's Elmo is a very likeable character. His easy-going, laid back "Nothin' To It" look on life is a sharp contrast to the emotional conflict between Nina and Blume. Elmo is a traveling musician who moves in with Nina after she divorces Blume. He enjoys playing his music and having a good time. Blume ends up liking him too, and uses him as a reason to come and visit Nina to win her back.

In the end this was a story about a man desperately trying to win his ex-wife back. He will do everything possible to do so. Along the way we follow him through his despair and sometimes we laugh at it and sometimes we cry.

Directed and written by Paul Mazursky. (Mazursky himself plays Segal's law partner.)

Paul Mazursky gave us three fine films: Blume in Love, Harry & Tonto and Moscow On the Hudson, and a host of lesser works that we can still enjoy. I can't think of many American directors of the last half-century with a record like his. Blume In Love is obviously influenced by Truffaut's Jules and Jim, but is funnier, faster and not indebted to literary models as Truffaut's film was.

The triangle of Blume, Nina and Elmo works so well because of Kris Kristofferson's easy charm and rock star charisma. The story would have foundered on Blume's obsessiveness and Nina's Puritan desire to do good ("I haven't done much for the farmworkers, but I boycott the supermarkets") had Elmo not been around to keep things light. The story he tells of the bust in Franklin, Tenn. is wonderfully funny, although a little scary, and the trio's singing Chester the Goat is a delight.

I became a George Segal fan when I first saw this movie, and I can't help but lament the lack of intelligence and depth in today's actors when I see what he does with this difficult character. Marsha Mason is his equal in talent, playing Arlene, Blume's vulnerable lover who knows her days are numbered. The smaller roles are ably filled, particularly Shelley Winters as the woman whose husband left her.