Inevitable as Autumn

Inevitable as Autumn Here is a melancholy little love story, carefully crafted, that evokes the kind of mood more ambitious projects only hint at. Made in Europe on a slender budget by Screenwriter James Salter (Downhill Racer), Three says more about young love in a single scene than Last Summer, for example, does in its entire running time.

Salter, working from an Irwin Shaw short story, has kept the plot simple, concentrating on nuance of character and atmosphere. Taylor (Sam Waterston) and Bert (Robie Porter) are two decidedly American college boys touring Europe during the summer in a beat-up Peugeot. One morning in Florence's Piazza della Signoria, Taylor meets a bored and footloose English girl named Marty (Charlotte Rampling) who is alone on holiday and obviously receptive to some attractive company. She takes the boys to visit some jaded Italian friends; they respond by inviting her along on the remainder of their trip.

It is all Taylor's idea. "She'll come as a friend, like one of us," he says, "with the understanding that she doesn't choose between us." Bert agrees, but it is a compact made to be broken. Taylor, longingly in love with Marty, clings to his word; he cannot bring himself to violate the agreement and "ruin the beautiful summer" by sleeping with her. Bert has no such scruples. The result is as inevitable as autumn.

Such a fragile theme could easily have been ground into pulp, but Salter is a film maker of discretion. He includes too many scenes of motoring and picnicking, but he has a laconic facility with dialogue and an eye for the small gesture that can transform a scene from an actor's project into reality. Sam Waterston is a superb young naturalistic performer, Robie Porter is convincing and human in an unsympathetic role, and Charlotte Rampling, all angles and sensuality, is that rare thing, a beautiful woman who can also fairly be called an actress.

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