Here's what happens. John picks up Mary in the bar, likes her looks (the anemic, haunted face grabs him,) takes her home to his pad, sleeps with her, and then the next day (not even knowing each other's names) they gingerly try to decide whether to live with one another.
Mary seems fairly normal, but John has one of those hang-ups that are fashionable in singles bars: He only likes the girl if she doesn't appear to want him to like her too much. She figures this out, and so she pretends and then he pretends. He pretends so hard that she leaves. He races after her. He doesn't know her name, but he does know the general neighborhood she lives in. So he charters a cab and cruises up and down side streets for about five hours, occasionally jumping out of the cab to ask a cop: "Do you know where there are any streets with trees on them? It's a an emergency!" Like I say, just a typical young guy.
Finally he comes back to the apartment, and Mary is there. She was there all the time. She didn't leave, you see. He thought she left, but she was still there, So she waited for him, "I was looking for you," he says. "I know," she says. They go to bed and introduce themselves. Now answer me this: Why didn't she go after him and tell him she hadn't left? He could have saved 30 bucks in cab fares.
This is director Peter Yates' first film with intimate subject matter, after the two excellent action films "Bullitt" and "Robbery." He doesn't get intimate very easily. The characters keep looking at each other out of the side of the camera's eye. And they roam around one of those painfully unlikely apartments. Remember the apartment Sandy Dennis had in "Sweet November" (1968) -- the one with the bed under the skylight and ladders running up to lofts everywhere? Dustin Hoffman has had it done over in white.
While Dustin and Mia are trying to find their way around this labyrinth, Yates shovels in lots of flashbacks to their earlier affairs. She was the mistress of a state representative; he dated a fashion model. Typical. The trouble with the flashbacks is that Yates wants to be fashionable, and so the flashbacks segue directly into the present. Mia drops a glass in an airport, and also in Dustin's kitchen. Dustin talks to his old girlfriend, and he's talking out loud to Mia. After a while you realize the whole movie is based on the premise that the characters unconsciously talk aloud all the time. Even when they don't think they are, is my guess.
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