1979 - AN ALMOST PERFECT AFFAIR - pretty poor love story

A love story from a good but very erratic director, Michael Ritchie.  Ritchie has a very up and down list of films.  He would direct good films like Downhill Racer, The Candidate, Smile and The Bad News Bears and then there were the bad films.  Prime Cut, The Golden Child, Fletch Lives and The Island.  An Almost Perfect Affair is one of his bad films.

 

This is a love story set during the Cannes Film Festival.  A self involved independent film maker has a brief affair with the wife of an Italian film producer.  The independent film maker is at Cannes to peddle his dreary little 16mm film on the life of Gary Gilmore.  Through a  completely contrived circumstance he hooks up with an Italian producers wife.  The resulting romance is to put it mildly dull and very boring, Ritchie phoned this one.

The independent film maker is played by Keith Carradine who is essentially playing the same character he played in Altman's Nashville.  The wife is played by Monica Vitti as the usual larger than life Italian stereotype.  Vitti is definitely playing against type in this film.  Usually her best roles were as some angst ridden depressive woman in Antonioni's better films.  It's kind of dispiriting to watch her perform in this silly romantic comedy plus her English is not very good.

About the only fun to be had in this film are the background glimpses of film personalities such as entertainment reporter Rona Barrett, directors Sergio Leone and Paul Mazursky and actors George Peppard, Brooke Shields and Farrah Fawcett.  But these little cameos can't save this uninteresting film.

93 minutes, written by Walter Bernstein and Don Petersen.