Fractured Freud

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

BAD TIMING/ A SENSUAL OBSESSION Directed by Nicolas Roeg Screenplay by Yale Udoff

Modern, that is to say post-Freudian, Vienna. But the doings related in this film are strictly pre-Freudian, not to say prehistoric, in their banality. A rather dour young American psychiatrist (Art Garfunkel) is accosted at a party by a young American something or other (Theresa Russell), who is rather feverish in her gaiety. Instead of his suggesting a professional appointment, they decide to have an affair. But he cannot keep it light, and she cannot take it seriously; the rich variety of sexual experience she has had has led her to the conclusion that the pleasures of romance are always messy and impermanent. In time, she attempts suicide by overdosing on pills, whereupon the psychiatrist behaves rather badly. He delays his response to her call for help and then commits what the investigating policeman (Harvey Keitel) calls "ravishment" on her drugged and defenseless person.

In the recounting, this glum and familiar little tale of obsession worked out in an act of paltry vengeance sounds thin and narrow. And so it is, at bottom. But the story is told mainly in a jumble of quick-cut flashbacks as the man waits in the hospital to see if the doctors can save his sometime lover. Interspersed in all this are interrogations of the psychiatrist by the detective and some peculiarly nasty glimpses into the surgery room, where un pleasant things are being done to the lady.

This skittery manner has worked for Di rector Roeg in the past, notably in Don 't Look Now, but it does not really suit a study in obsessional behavior. As anyone who has ever suffered that peculiar form of mental torment knows, it tends to fo cus the mind narrowly and dully, rather as an aching tooth does, permitting it few enlivening leaps or juxtapositions of the sort this movie keeps attempting.

Garfunkel brings very little to the party. He is a bland, pleasant-faced man who seems incapable of strong words, let alone strong feelings. As for Actress Russell, one's heart goes out to her.

Rarely has any performer, this side of a porn movie, been subjected to as many ugly and degrading moments in the course of a role. She endures them all without visible signs of embarrassment and even manages to act a bit. But hers is a lost cause. And this is a movie that deserves to disappear as quickly as possible. By Richard Schickel

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