Aka X, Y and Zee. Quite frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a shit! Middle-aged London architect Robert Blakeley’s (Michael Caine) angry wife Zee (Elizabeth Taylor) finally gets even with him for his affair with young widowed boutique owner Stella (Susannah York) by first attempting suicide and then having a go at seducing the woman herself. And Stella’s past threatens to engulf them all … Come back here, you! I haven’t dismissed you yet! This is Irish novelist Edna O’Brien’s first original screenplay and it was published in advance of the film’s release, with some evident alterations to the source material. Worth watching as an incredible time capsule of the ageing Swinging London set hiccoughing their way into the new decade and with gems of performances from the cast. Taylor’s flamboyant bisexual complete with Cleopatra makeup flames into violence when provoked by her sly puss of a husband, recalling the best moments of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in this raunchy iteration of the woman scorned. She’s dressed horribly, matched only by fag hag Gladys (Margaret Leighton in an astonishing pink frightwig) who shows up in a gold see-through number. Caine excels as the man who finds himself cuckolded by his victim and goes off the rails pondering whether it’s possible men have nervous breakdowns, chastened by reminders of his wideboy background; while York gets to have another tilt at the kind of plaything part from The Killing of Sister George but with a taint of something else – as she says, I’m sick of serenity. It often tips into camp particularly in the with-it party scenes but there’s a truth about the relationships that shears through the trashy affect and all three rise to meet the perversity that haunts them. It’s nicely shot around London by Billy Williams and there’s a sharp score by Stanley Myers which acknowledges the slide back and forth from uxorious romance to self-parody. Look out for a young Michael Cashman as Gavin, York’s design assistant. Filled with sex and spite, this is highly entertaining. Directed by Brian G. Hutton, if you can believe it, in a total change of pace from Where Eagles Dare and Kelly’s Heroes. But of course! I think I know what she is. She practically told me herself
mondomovies 