The gay theme was placed at the center of the publicity for this Arthur Hiller film, but in the movie it’s off to one side—it occupies, in fact, the same structural position that fatal disease did in Hiller’s Love Story. The film is about the breakdown of a beautiful relationship caused by forces beyond anyone’s control—a classic theme of melodrama, and this, indeed, is a surprisingly classical work, one that cannily grafts modern themes onto the oldest effects in the book. Unfortunately, Hiller doesn’t command the intensity of feeling that might have made it emotionally valid, and he doesn’t have the awareness of the cultural forces at work in his film that might have made it intellectually respectable. Kate Jackson and Michael Ontkean are the doomed couple, Harry Hamlin the unconscious agent of fate.
