Film Review: Willie & Phil (1980)

(source: tmdb.org)

Few films give away their main gimmick as quickly as Willie & Phil, 1980 romantic drama written and directed by Paul Mazursky, did. The plot begins in 1970 Greenwich Village when two young men – Jewish high school teacher Willie Kaufman (played by Michael Ontkean) and Italian American fashion photographer Phil d’Amico (played by Ray Sharkey) – meet while attending screening of Jules et Jim, François Truffaut’s famous film about ménage à trois. They discover that they share many things other than love of French cinema, so they become best friends. One day they meet Jeannette Sutherland (played by Margot Kidder), charming young woman who left rural Kentucky in order to seek new life in New York. Both men immediately fall in love with her, which create dilemma for Jeannette who is the first to suggest that the their relationship might be described as “threesome”. This idea is put in practice when Jeannette, after a coin toss, begins to live with Willie, while still hanging out and occasionally having sex with Phil. Trio goes separate ways when Jeannette gets pregnant and marry Willie, while Phil seeks fortune in California. After a while, Willie, always willing to seek new identity and experiment with different lifestyles, decides to live like a farmer, much to the displeasure of Jeannette who would ultimately move with Phil, now a wealthy film maker.

Mazursky is known for films like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Unmarried Woman which, usually with mild satiric touch, explored changing social and sexual mores of 1970s. So, the idea of Mazursky remaking Truffaut’s classic and setting the plot in contemporary America looked good on paper. What the audience got, on the other hand, was quite different, probably because unorthodox romantic partnership practised by three protagonists in the years following Sexual Revolution didn’t look as shocking and extraordinary as in the original, set in pre-WW1 Europe. Mazursky was probably aware of that, so he tried to remind the audience of the old times with extensive scenes featuring protagonists’ parents that still sticking with the old ways. Those scenes, on the other hand, not only prolonged the film but also underlined sometimes annoying use of ethnic and cultural stereotypes (which would have been even worse if Mazursky had its way and got Woody Allen and Al Pacino in title roles). Mazursky, on the other hand, wants to make his film very clear and leave no doubt what he wanted to say, and this is done through the extensive use of his own voice over narration, which makes Willie and Phil less confusing than many other similar films from the period.

His efforts, however, can’t hide the problems with casting. Michael Ontkean became global star due to his role of Harry S. Truman in Twin Peaks, but ten years earlier, his charisma was nowhere to be found. His blandness is quite visible in the scenes that he shares with intense Ray Sharkey, and, unlike Sharkey, he lacks chemistry with Kidder, one of the great muses of New Hollywood. Even in one brief (and ultimately needless) scene he is easily outclassed by young Laurence Fishburne playing one of Willie’s high school students. There is enough humour to provide some entertainment to the audience, especially those viewers who want to become familiar with 1970s cultural trends, but in the end Mazursky’s depiction of romantic threesomes proves to be vastly inferior to Truffaut’s.

RATING: 5/10 (++)