Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

SnoopyStyle Elizabeth Fielding (Glenda Jackson) returns from spa town Baden Baden, Germany where she met gigolo conman Thomas (Helmut Berger). Her husband Lewis (Michael Caine) is having writer's block and imagines all manners of things his wife is doing. Catherine is the hot nanny. Isabel (Kate Nelligan) is Elizabeth's gossiping friend who Lewis hates. Swan (Michael Lonsdale) is tracking Thomas. Then Thomas shows up at the Fielding home.The couple never intrigued me. They have limited chemistry. Part of the problem is that the movie starts with them apart. They never really connect for me. Neither is the affair that compelling. There is a coldness to the movie. Maybe it's the intent to show a relationship in trouble. It does it in an uninteresting way.

andrew-747-163520 I'm English and left the UK for the USA in 1974 so this was filmed in the year I left.It would be a film made by intellectual snobs for intellectual snobs and if you didn't understand it that was OK. You really weren't meant to get it. This and more like it were made for the critics to devote yards of written critiques about. It's strange to talk of times when profit and bottom lines were not that important but that is what it was like. Superb actors throwing away their talents on horrible films. They were not going to complain it added to their repertoire especially Michael Caine. Does it make for entertainment absolutely not.The film doesn't even have continuity, why would Glenda Jackson run off with the playboy after hating him for so long? It makes not sense. Then we have an enigmatic car scene with Michael Caine who has apparently driven all the way in his Bentley.No Englishman of the era would do that.They would catch a plane to Paris and then a train and taxi. It's like reading a book that suddenly makes no sense, and therefore you stop believing the rest of the book, and wonder why you are wasting your time.That is the crux of this movie

jotix100 Not having seen "The Romantic Englishwoman" before, we got the opportunity as it was shown on a classical movie channel recently. Its pedigree showed a lot of talent went into the production of this movie. First of all, Joseph Losey, as a director, then the screenplay written by Tom Stoppard with Thomas Wiseman, the author of the original novel, and last a cast that included Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson, so could be wrong?Lewis, the writer, is apparently blocked. His new novel is taking place in his mind as well as some of the action appears on the screen. It involves Lewis' wife, Elizabeth interacting with a man that she met at the luxurious Brenner Park Hotel and the Baden-Baden casino where a bored Elizabeth goes to get away from it all. Elizabeth is surprised as she finds Thomas, the stranger she met on the train. The novel follows loosely the novel which Lewis is trying to write. What went on at the posh resort, suddenly changes, when Thomas suddenly decides to try England for a change of pace. Thomas deals in drugs, but obviously has no clue as where to hide the powdery substance in a drain pipe of the hotel. Lewis is intrigued with the prospect of having Thomas close by inviting him to stay with him as a personal secretary, infuriating Elizabeth, before she finally falls for the visitor's charms. Boredom is an element for most of the rich set around Lewis and Elizabeth, something the author cannot take. Things become a bit difficult for Thomas, who decides to leave for the Continent taking Elizabeth along, who by then has become involved with the younger man. Because of Thomas drug problem it does not take too long before the people he cheated get a hold of him, thus ending Elizabeth fascination with this pseudo poet man.This is not one of the best efforts by the distinguish director Joseph Losey. His triumphs in films like "The Servant", "Mr. Klein", "The Go Between" and other more successful films, are not reflected in this one. There are hints of his talent. The elegance he always brought to his work is present here. The posh interiors in most of the film are prominently shown. One would have wished to have seen a better copy of this film in which the emphasis is luxury in contrast with the shallowness of the character of Thomas, who uses older women in order to survive.The best thing in the film is Glenda Jackson's Elizabeth. She is a complex character with needs and desires overlooked by her husband. Feeling she is the object of Thomas' interest makes her see him in a more romantic way. Michael Caine is always a welcome presence in any film where he decides to appear. Helmut Berger's Thomas practically derail the picture. Maybe another actor would have been more credible than him. Kate Nelligan is totally wasted, even though she has top billing.

James Hitchcock Spa towns seem to have an odd effect on film-makers. Alain Resnais' "Last year in Marienbad", set in the Czech spa town of that name, has a reputation for being bafflingly obscure, so much so that it won itself a place in Michael and Harry Medved's "Fifty Worst Films of All Time". And then there is Joseph Losey's "The Romantic Englishwoman", part of which is set in the German spa town of Baden Baden.The plot concerns Elizabeth, the "romantic Englishwoman" of the title and the wife of a well-known novelist. While staying in Baden Baden Elizabeth has an affair with a young German named Thomas. Or does she? Is it possible that this "affair" was simply a fantasy on her part? Or does it only exist in the mind of her jealous husband Lewis? Thomas, an admirer of Lewis' work, later comes to stay with Lewis and Elizabeth at their home in England, where Lewis makes him surprisingly welcome for a man who is (or whom he believes to be) his wife's lover. There is also a sub-plot about Thomas' criminal associates, led by a man named Swan, who are pursuing him across Europe, but the exact details remain vague.There is an adage that one should never judge a book by its cover, and the cinematic equivalent would probably be "don't judge a film by the big names in its title sequence". Even if you have admired the other work of those names. Michael Caine (now Sir Michael) is one of the cinema's greatest stars, appearing in some of the best British films of the sixties, seventies and eighties such as "Alfie", "Get Carter" and "Educating Rita". Glenda Jackson is today best known as a Labour politician, but was a fine actress in her youth. Scriptwriter Tom Stoppard is perhaps Britain's greatest living playwright. Losey was best known to me as the director of "The Go-Between", one of the major British films of the early seventies and one of the films which started the "heritage cinema" movement.Unfortunately, all this assembled talent does not make for a good film. "The Romantic Englishwoman" goes to show that baffling obscurity was not a monopoly of the Nouvelle Vague and that British art-house film-makers could be just as infuriatingly obscure as their French counterparts. (Losey was American by birth, but I count him as an honorary Briton. He was forced to leave Hollywood during the McCarthy era because of his left-wing sympathies and thereafter worked mostly in Britain). I would not quite count this among my all-time fifty worst films, but it is nevertheless a dull and confusing one which not only lacks a clear storyline but also lacks any perceptible point. There are some films where ambiguity can be a positive virtue rather than a fault, but this is not one of them. 4/10