It may be nothing more than highbrow cotton candy, but watching Timothy Hutton fall in and out of love with two beautiful women (while at the same time falling in and out of his vague Middle European accent) is an experience not without some incidental pleasure, silly as it is. Jerzy Skolimowski directed the multi-national (i.e. badly dubbed) cast, led by Hutton as a 19th century Russian aristocrat who (talk about bad luck) loves and loses both Valeria Golino and Nastassia Kinski. One is passionate and beautiful, the other is beautiful and passionate, and it's difficult to feel sorry for Hutton's mortal anguish in choosing between them The film abruptly ends just when the plot is beginning to thicken, but who needs narrative integrity with such romantic coffee table scenery, of ruined abbeys at dusk or horse drawn carriages gliding through misty tree-lined boulevards? The purple title and lush period setting make the film (based on an Ivan Turgenev story) a near perfect guilty pleasure, and it should be approached as such.
Review of Torrents of Spring
