With the subjects of the story as phony as Jane Fonda's wig, this melodrama that takes beautiful advantage of the Greek locations only provides minimal entertainment, and is mainly a very pretentious, boring film. Publishing executive Peter Finch is caught in a loveless marriage with Angela Lansbury (sadly typecast as a shrew, although one who prefers to live reclusively) and finds attraction to the younger Jane Fonda, whose illnesses indicate that she is dying. She's separated from Arthur Hill (son of wealthy Alexander Knox) and is victimized by her passive aggressive mother Constance Cummings whom she obviously can't stand but is too afraid to stand up to. Finch, the constant complaining Lansbury and the fragile Fonda end up on a vacation in Athens where Fonda has always wanted to go, but the vacation ends up being a disaster.
I always feel sorry for Lansbury when I see her in a role like this because her talents were much more varied and outside a few of these parts (such as "The Manchurian Candidate" from the previous year), her harridan characters were written to be very black and white. It's not her fault that she's annoying in this, and when she catches the eye of a Greek masher in a bar, it's only a matter of time before she's out of there because she knows that her husband really can't stand her. I'm trying to search for the stronger elements of the plot which is really weak, but outside of the beautiful photography, can't find any. It's the second time I've suffered through this phony Greek tragedy, and if the islands were as weak as the story, they would have sunk years ago. Fonda in a fragile role seems already like a corpse, and she barely has a character at all.
I always feel sorry for Lansbury when I see her in a role like this because her talents were much more varied and outside a few of these parts (such as "The Manchurian Candidate" from the previous year), her harridan characters were written to be very black and white. It's not her fault that she's annoying in this, and when she catches the eye of a Greek masher in a bar, it's only a matter of time before she's out of there because she knows that her husband really can't stand her. I'm trying to search for the stronger elements of the plot which is really weak, but outside of the beautiful photography, can't find any. It's the second time I've suffered through this phony Greek tragedy, and if the islands were as weak as the story, they would have sunk years ago. Fonda in a fragile role seems already like a corpse, and she barely has a character at all.