BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Borgarkeri A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

FrostyChud I've just returned after seeing this movie and it has messed your dude up. This was my life for the two years I spent with my Milena. The parallels are uncanny. I am kind of nerdy just like Garfunkel...same pathetic physique...but like Garfunkel I have a certain magnetism. Garfunkel's not exactly a wimp...there's some steel in his gaze. My Milena was just as magnetic and beautiful as Theresa Russell...really. My Milena also lived in a sordid, messy, sexy aerie with a big bed, overfull ashtrays, half-read books everywhere. The alcohol? Check. The infidelity? Check. The suicide attempts? Check. The much older other man? Check. The sleazy, disgusting party friends? Check. The late-night drunk calls that may or may not have been suicide attempts? Check. The intense sex that regularly turned into something twisted? Check. Just like Garfunkel I was hooked...just like Garfunkel I had a "together" life...my God, I even study psychoanalysis...and just like Garfunkel there was more than a hint of bad faith in the togetherness I opposed to my Milena's sloppiness. Like Garfunkel, the idea that Milena had other lovers made me crazy...like Theresa Russell, my Milena needed secrets...lies...she couldn't breathe without her lies and secrets.The scene where she sets Garfunkel up with her fake suicide attempt only to loose the full force of her hysterical cruelty on him...check...down to the blows and the broken bottles...and it marked the moment our love died, even if things dribbled on for a while after that. Anyway...you get the picture. You know a movie is good when it shows you things about YOUR OWN life that you hadn't noticed before. That's the secret of a great movie: you feel like it's talking to you and to you alone. I have a feeling I'm not the only person who walked out of the cinema feeling like he had just seen his own life on the screen. Almost everything is perfect. This film is even more disturbing than DON'T LOOK NOW. That is saying a lot. The one wrong note for me was Harvey Keitel. I liked the contrast of his healthy virility with Garfunkel's nerdiness...but Keitel got something wrong. Not sure what...it was certainly a tricky role, and he wasn't exactly bad, but something was wrong.

gavin6942 The setting is Vienna. A young American woman (Theresa Russell) is brought to a hospital after overdosing on pills, apparently in a suicide attempt. A police detective suspects foul play on the part of her lover, an American psychology professor (Art Garfunkel).Although his is only a supporting role, we must single out Harvey Keitel -- this is a great role for him and he exhibits some nice hair. I think younger audiences (myself included) might know him more as a gangster... this was a pleasant departure from that.Garfunkel's character gives a lecture on the connection between voyeurism, spying and politics (and says conservatives do it but feel guilty). I feel like there was something important here, not just to the film but as a social criticism at large. Unfortunately, I am not entirely sure what it is.Lastly, I loved The Who recurring motif.

Red-Barracuda Nicolas Roeg has never exactly been a conventional director. Bad Timing is one of his most complex works. It's a multi-layered and fragmented story about a relationship that gradually goes out of control ending horribly. As is the way with Roeg, editing is hugely important. In this instance the editing is used to cut and paste the narrative in a very non-linear fashion so that the story comes at us with contrasting jarring emotional changes. It's overall a very intense film to watch. One of those that only really settles into your mind once it's over. It's a very adult film with frank sexuality and complex psychology going on throughout. At times it's very unpleasant and it isn't really very surprising it met with some censorship issues. It's equally not too hard to see why it was a commercial failure too. While admittedly the distribution problem it had could not have helped, it's not really a film that has any lightness to it. It's an unremittingly bleak story with almost no humour. This isn't intended as a criticism just an observation.The two principal actors do well with pretty difficult material. It's often sexually very explicit although never erotic. It must've taken some bravery for the leads to act these roles. Although I do expect sexually frank imagery from Nicolas Roeg, on the other hand I wasn't entirely prepared for seeing Art Garfunkel's gonads. But as I say this material is never sensationalized although it does ultimately end in a sex scene that is certainly very grim indeed. However, the main thrust of the narrative, such as it is, is the exploration of a mutually destructive relationship. Roeg's style of bold editing is very well suited to tell this fragmented story. Despite the subject of young lovers it's certainly not a romance. It's way too downbeat for that. If you've just started dating someone, this is not the film to watch together.

RResende Roeg has a troubled mind. Or at least is fond of entering troubled minds. His biggest quality is something i value a lot in a filmmaker: he paints his canvas, but he also designates where we seat to look at it. He builds the atmosphere and makes us a spaceship to enter it. That's our feeling. But than there's something more interesting he does. We think we are comfortable as the designated watchers of what he depicts, but what he does, mostly through camera work and editing (which is great in this film) is trying to push us into the game, and going through the same risks and trouble of the characters in the film. That will to place the viewer at the center of what matters is commonly tried these days, but i think Roeg was a visionary in his days, and that includes this film.We have a psychoanalyst, which is a shortcut for saying he is someone who works relations inside out. He is obsessed, has retroactive jealousy, and the film is the evolution of how he fights himself to make a convenient story that allows him to be with the woman, something he eventually fails to do. We know how the thing ends from the beginning, so the film uses the form of allowing us to know the ending point and than driving as in flashback to that point. The editing is frantic and somehow psychedelic, something Roeg might have learned in his London 60' experience. And the intention was precisely to make our visual mind work like the troubled mind of Garfunkel's character.An extra significant point, something Ted Goranson really likes to notice, and which i'm starting to fall for is the empathy Roeg has with the actress, Theresa Russell, which would lead to marriage. You really can understand that. Her character is not the center of the story, it's all about Garfunkel, but we miss that unless we think about that. Garfunkel's character was at this point a representative of Roeg's urges for this beautiful woman.The film that best portrays this relation, and simultaneously is Roeg's best, to me, is Insignificance. This Bad Timing is one of his most celebrated, but it has minor power compared to the other one. It's a good experience, but i suggest you use it as an introduction to the other.My opinion: 3/5 http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com insignificance