Three

Young Americans Bert (Robie Porter) and Taylor (Sam Waterston) buy an old Puegeot to drive across southern Europe. They encounter various female travelers. Marty (Charlotte Rampling) joins them and puts them to the test.

I don't know much about director James Salter. He seems more of a writer and this is his only directing credit. The sense of bored youth is all over this movie. The girls almost don't have the strength to lift their arms. The people live so slowly that they almost travel back in time. It's a more amateurish production. It does have the great Waterston and the great Rampling in their youth. These are beautiful people in their 20's. Rampling is especially adapt at playing beautiful, young, bored, and yet mentally alert. There are moments which struck me as funny. It's not a movie of action thrills but the old world charms do have its own particular thrills. Let's watch them lie around some more.

Charlotte Rampling was really beautiful... A subtle film on a subject treated so many times in the movie history. But this one is elegant and interesting not the least because of the very good actors. The characters have depth. Dialogues are good. Marvellous spots for the film shooting on the French Riviera. Definitely worth seeing.

My vote : 8 / 10.

I didn't catch up to this film until thirty years after the fact, but I was pulled in by its simple, elegant emotional resonance. This is a pretty young Sam Waterston. Though the plot is rife with potential rivalries over Charlotte Rampling, the film lays an astute and well-observed tale about friendship over a road film and, happily, these guys aren't ugly Americans, and even make an attempt to try to speak the languages along the way. Wonderful, spare location photography. I started watching it out of morbid interest, but ended up being lulled by that heart ache and yearning at the center of a vacation and adventure movie.

I happened to see this film when off sick from school (possibly) some thirty years ago... Although I now recall very few details of the plot, the beauty of the then (almost) ingénue Charlotte Rampling drifting around Mediterranean locations, the strange, at least to a young boy, dynamics of the love triangle depicted and probably the overall impression I retain of an aura of autumnal melancholy have haunted me ever since. I'd love to see it again now as an adult (perhaps at the risk of experiencing my warm nostalgic feelings dissolve into disappointment?). Only the recent, but richly deserved renaissance of Ms Rampling's career as a character actor provides any glimmer of hope that this, admittedly minor, twilight of the 60s film will see a DVD release...

This film wears well since the story is an age old one. So nice to see the young Sam Waterston and Charlotte Rampling in very picturesque european locations.What happened to Robie Porter? Two male friends in Europe meet a beautiful English girl who then travels with them on their summer tour (many young Americans did this in the sixties in Europe) One, Sam Waterston, is an idealist about love, falling for Rampling, but keeping a promise to his friend that everything has to be kept platonic for the three to survive as a group. Rampling needs the attractive company but also wants a physical relationship which Porter, at the end, gives to her. Waterston realises the magic of the threesome is broken and gives up the the romantic thoughts of studying in Paris and breaks away to return home. Thoughtful and well told, more through subtle actions than words.