This two-person play is transferred to the screen without being able to escape its stage origins, but it offers a great opportunity to see two fine actors give two fine performances.
Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda play lovers who meet once a year at the same time and place for a weekend together. In between, they live their separate lives with their respective families, and they spend as much time catching each other up about the goings on in their individual worlds as they do fooling around during their yearly trysts.
Burstyn and Alda are a joy to watch, and they handle the evolution of their characters well. The movie itself gets better as the two principals age -- the early scenes don't come off as well (the worst segment is one in which Burstyn's simple housewife experiments with hippie-dom while Alda's uptight Republican struggles with the death of a son in Vietnam), but the later scenes are simply wonderful, full of a poignancy that resists sentimentality.
And I love the theme song to this movie. My wife and I had it played at our wedding.
Grade: B+
Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda play lovers who meet once a year at the same time and place for a weekend together. In between, they live their separate lives with their respective families, and they spend as much time catching each other up about the goings on in their individual worlds as they do fooling around during their yearly trysts.
Burstyn and Alda are a joy to watch, and they handle the evolution of their characters well. The movie itself gets better as the two principals age -- the early scenes don't come off as well (the worst segment is one in which Burstyn's simple housewife experiments with hippie-dom while Alda's uptight Republican struggles with the death of a son in Vietnam), but the later scenes are simply wonderful, full of a poignancy that resists sentimentality.
And I love the theme song to this movie. My wife and I had it played at our wedding.
Grade: B+