Film Review: Bad Timing (1980)
So many cult films owe their cult status to merely being rejected, censored, or suppressed at their premiere, thus allowing a small minority of vocal fans to alter its perception for the better in subsequent years or decades. Some potentially cult films never live up to such potential, despite being made by people with a number of cult films in their filmography. One such director was Nicolas Roeg, whose 1980 drama Bad Timing, despite being controversial at the time, has remained among the more obscure parts of his career.
The plot begins in Vienna with Milena Flaherty (played by Theresa Russell), a young American expatriate, being rushed to hospital after an apparent suicide attempt. As doctors struggle to save her life, authorities begin to question Dr Alex Linden (played by Art Garfunkel), an American psychologist who called the ambulance and who describes himself as her friend. Through flashbacks, we see how Linden, who teaches at a local university, met Milena and became fascinated with her beauty, free spirit, and impulsiveness. She was apparently attracted to him, and the two began a passionate romantic relationship. Milena, however, revealed herself to be promiscuous, making Alex increasingly jealous and even infuriated by her refusal to divorce Stefan Vodnik (played by Denholm Elliott), a middle-aged man living in Communist Czechoslovakia. Their relationship sours, but Alex remains sexually obsessed with her and begins to stalk her. Netusil (played by Harvey Keitel), the police inspector investigating the incident, sees small inconsistencies in Alex’s story and tries to make him confess what he really did to Milena.
Nicolas Roeg managed to put rock stars to good use in their acting debuts on two previous occasions – Mick Jagger in Performance and David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth. With Art Garfunkel, the 1960s folk-rock icon of Simon & Garfunkel fame, the third time wasn’t the charm. Unlike Jagger, who played a washed-up rock star, or Bowie, who played an alien, Garfunkel was tasked with the role of a “normie”, which made the limits of his acting ability quite apparent, as well as the complete lack of chemistry with Russell. She, on the other hand, goes in the opposite direction, sparing neither herself nor the audience from emotional highs and lows, playing a character whose occasionally manic personality hides childhood traumas, depression, alcoholism, drug dependence, and other issues that would ultimately lead her on a self-destructive path. Russell plays her role bravely, with her character often shown naked in a literal sense, even in scenes that feature unpleasant medical procedures. Harvey Keitel, meanwhile, plays an interesting character of a dedicated policeman, but his role is compromised by his refusal to abandon his Brooklyn accent when portraying an Austrian. This decision compromises the naturalistic style of the film, especially when compared with the English character actor Denholm Elliott, who is much more convincing as a Czech.
Bad choices in casting were matched by bad choices in Roeg’s directorial style. His rapid editing and mixing of flashbacks with the present – sometimes in an effort to make the audience, as well as Netusil, question Alex’s version of events – too often make the film confusing. Many intriguing details – including hints that Milena’s character became the object of Cold War spy games and was manipulated by men from both sides of the Iron Curtain – are lost, and Bad Timing would require repeated viewings for them to be noticed or properly understood. This is, however, a luxury most audiences would not have, especially after the disturbing revelation at the end that repulsed not only audiences but also some distributors, who reportedly called Bad Timing “a sick film made by sick people for sick people”. While this film proved to be a dark and very unpleasant viewing experience, it was apparently quite another matter for its director, who fell in love with Russell on set; she later married Roeg and became his muse.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
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