Intimate Encounters (1986 TV Movie)
4/10
A housewife who daydreams...
1 November 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Julie Atkins has been married for 15 years to Nick (James Brolin, I really had forgotten he was in this movie!) who's a very busy man always in business meetings and trips (it's not clear what he does for a living, but he works hard to keep their lifestyle).

As a housewife she's bored. She and her husband used to be seen by others as "Barbie and Ken", and she misses the old days of young lust, adventures and passion. At the same time, she attends college to get a diploma in Special Education. Apparently, she's good with kids, but she's always distracted which makes difficult to retain theory.

Nick is very aloof of her wife's attempts to revive their relationship that has become stale and very domestic. Julie starts daydreaming with sexual fantasies that are really hilarious because Donna Mills doesn't show one bit of skin. There's nothing steamy about them. As if they're porn inspired (smoking environment, hot guys with chiseled features, heavy sax in the background, etc.), but she's still dressed from head to toe.

Due to her constant daydreaming, she burns the breakfast, floods the kitchen while washing the dishes, almost crashes her car.

The script is really cheesy. The only thing Julie comes up with is "fear" every time someone is asking what is wrong with her, including her therapist (Cicely Tyson). I mean, if you're not honest with your own therapist who's there to listen to your darkest thoughts, so then, who else can help you?

By the time she goes back to therapy, she already started acting on those sexual fantasies and can't stop. I'm not sure whether she wants romance or just wants to have sex with other men...because in the end, that's all what she gets from her lovers: one-night stands. She seems to be a sex addict? Plus, we don't see a change from the supposedly "frumpy" wife to a sexier wife now that she gets more attention from men.

It is as if production or the suits couldn't let this movie be about a woman who wanted to explore her sexuality, and they tried to fix it hinting that Julie only misses her husband's attention (there's a pathetic scene in a restaurant when she tries to tell him that the man at the next table is flirting with her just get him jealous).

Anyway, it's good '80s nostalgia. Don't ask for quality, just dive into it.
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