Bad Timing movie review & film summary (1980) | Roger Ebert (2024)

One of the most difficult and challenging puzzles in filmmakingis to tell a story in flashback, and it is a test that Nicolas Roeg fails inhis new film, "Bad Timing."

That's a little surprising, since Roeg has proven himself a master oflabyrinthine story lines in such movies as "Don't Look Now" and"Performance." Those films, though, had a reason for being told outof chronological sequence—particularly "Don't Look Now," which wasabout precognition and so, of course, contained events that"happened" before they happened.

With"Bad Timing," though, it's hard to say why Roeg decided to begin atthe end and jump around in chronology. The movie contains no revelations thatlook different the second time around, and so the editing seems merely fancyfootwork, or Roeg showing us that he had done this before and can do it again.

Oneother possible motive for the extremely complex editing in "BadTiming" may be Roeg's desire to camouflage the fact that his story wouldbe thin and his characters shallow if they were just seen straight through frombeginning to end.

Themovie is about a relationship between two Americans who meet in Vienna. WhyVienna? Why not Vienna? Art Garfunkel plays a psychoanalyst and Theresa Russellplays a sexually uninhibited young woman who is an alcoholic and pill addict.Garfunkel, however, does not see her as a sick person, but as an excitingconquest. Although the audience can see that she's clearly in desperatephysical and mental trouble, Garfunkel's analyst takes advantage of herconfusion to move in and establish a sexual relationship.

It'snot, mind you, that she objects to sleeping with him. Indeed, she makes thefirst overture at a party. It's just that the kind of man who would sleep witha woman in that condition (especially if his professional training equipped himto understand her condition) would qualify as an insect. Perhaps the blame isnot entirely the analyst's: Nothing in this movie indicates that Roeg has anyparticular understanding of the fact that his heroine is desperately ill.

Andthat may be where the film's troubles begin. I suspect that this particularstory cannot be told straight through, from beginning to end, without dealinghonestly with the nature of the relationship. Since Roeg is unwilling, unableor unequipped to do that, he hides the relationship in a thicket of stylisticfireworks.

Hisfavorite editing device is to flashback repeatedly to a tracheotomy thatRussell undergoes after nearly killing herself with an overdose. The doctorscut open her throat and pound on her chest and she screams and bleeds, and thismakes great footage for Roeg to cut to whenever his film requires an emotionaljolt and he can't supply one.

Thereis also a "mystery" in the film, and a police inspector (HarveyKeitel) to shadow Garfunkel and try to solve it. The film's most annoyingblunder is the way it gradually unveils the solution of the mystery to us. Wesee one version of Russell's overdose episode, and then another and another,each one showing us a little more, until we find at the end that Garfunkel(gasp!) made love to her when he should have been calling an ambulance for her,instead.

Themovie makes this out as near-necrophilia. I make it out as the sort of thingthat can happen to you if your keep on taking your chances in singles bars.

"BadTiming" is finally just an exercise in telling a shallow and crude storyin a sophisticated and complicated way. Who needs it? This film has beenpraised for its honesty, but it would have taken far more honesty (not tomention courage) to deal with the personality disorders of these charactersinstead of simply burying them in blood, sex, and noise. If there is any reasonto see this film, however, it is the performance by Theresa Russell (who wasDustin Hoffman's lover in "Straight Time"). She is only 22 or 23, andyet her performance is astonishingly powerful. She will be in better films, Ihope, and is the only participant who need not be ashamed of this one.