BEFORE: I honestly had no idea that "Cheatin'" had a love quadrangle in it - two pairs of romantic couples, that is. Now it's looking like a real genius move to program my boss's film when I did, because tonight's film is also about two pairs of couples. Obviously it's from the swinging 60's, the era of "free love" so I'm kind of expecting the real hippie ethic tonight. Actor linking will resume after tonight, so this is really the start of a new actor chain as well. And this is the last programmed romance film before I turn things over to the Woodman.
THE PLOT: Couples Bob & Carol Sanders and Ted & Alice Henderson are best friends. After attending a weekend self-help self-discovery session, Bob and Carol feel newly enlightened, and want their friends, Ted and Alice, to feel the same way.
AFTER: Yeah, this pretty much went down the way I thought it would. The opening sequence (set for some strange reason to "The Hallelujah Chorus", which puts me in the mind of Christmas) is all about people getting in touch with themselves, via group therapy, couples therapy, scream therapy, and nudism. That's what we now remember about the late 1960's, besides "free love" and Woodstock. People who may have married young were then questioning their path once they got a little older, or people who are already older trying to act young, though not explicitly stated you can consider the changing politics and the peacenik/beatnik zeitgeist as a motivating factor.
Everything that happens between these two couples starts in a therapy session - initially Bob is there just as an observer, because he's planning to make a documentary about, umm, you know, they never got around to telling us that. Let's assume it's a film about therapy, or people in therapy. But the rules of therapy focus on honesty and feelings, so a few weeks later he admits to his wife that he had an affair while on a trip to San Francisco. She seems OK with it, and even mentions it to their best friends Ted & Alice, who are a bit more uptight.
The wheels are set in motion, resulting in Carol then having her own affair, which forces Bob to confront his own jealousy and possessiveness, and then once they've all broken through this barrier, all bets are off. I think what rings true here is the very real possessive nature that most people in long-term relationships tend to have. In nearly every marriage there is that time when one or both people will start thinking about other people, and then they have to choose how they're going to deal with this. For some people, this is the end of the relationship, and for others, it's just the beginning of something else.
Yes, this was a different time. An affair did not necessarily mean the end of things, especially since everyone was trying to be more modern and enlightened and not get bogged down in the limiting rules that their parents lived by. The characters in this film are able to make a distinction between casual sex and a loving relationship, with the new theory that one wouldn't kill the marriage, but the other one might.
What's weird is that the pendulum seemed to swing back the other way for a while - people in the Reagan era were talking about a return to old-fashioned values, family values, giving tax breaks to married couples that stayed married, and of course once herpes and AIDS hit the scene, I'm guessing that the era of swinging and swapping came to a swift close. For some people, anyway.
Nowadays, we've got Baby Mamas and starter marriages, surrogate kids and blended families, not to mention gay couples and polygamous relationships making everything even more confusing, not to mention bisexuals and pansexuals and transgenders. And still we've got Conservative nuts wishing things could be more like the 1950's. Sorry, but you just can't un-ring the bell that was the Sexual Revolution.
I don't quite get the ending of this film, though clearly it echoes the therapy session seen in the beginning, it's also quite obtuse. And the four-way sex scene, despite it's potentially scandalous nature, ended up being quite anti-climactic. Obviously there would be limits as to what they could show on screen, but by not showing anything substantial happening, it almost comes off as a non-starter. Did they all just quit after a little making out and decide that it didn't feel right? Did kissing other people in front of their spouses start to feel a little ridiculous, is that what happened?
Perhaps they each gained a new appreciation for their husband or wife by making out with somebody new. If that's the case, what a ridiculous notion. Only in a Hollywood film, (or a Bill Plympton animation...) I suspect that once the average person takes that step and cheats on their spouse, it's much harder to remain faithful in the future, not easier. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably just looking for a bit of strange...
Of course, it's not cheating if your spouse knows about it. Maybe that's what happened at the end - since the husbands both had permission to cheat, that took all the fun out of it. Sounds about right.
Starring Natalie Wood (last seen in "The Candidate"), Robert Culp (last seen in "Spy Hard"), Elliott Gould (last seen in "Ruby Sparks"), Dyan Cannon (last seen in "Kangaroo Jack"), Leif Garrett, with a cameo from Bill Cosby.
RATING: 4 out of 10 cop-outs
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