10,9,8,7,6 . . .

A CHANGE OF SEASONS Directed by Richard Lang Screenplay by Erich Segal, Ronni Kern, Fred Segal

One begins to wonder: Do people in Hollywood have affairs? In the year of Serial, Middle Age Crazy, Loving Couples and now A Change of Seasons, one begins to think not. If they did, then surely some of the wry worldliness of the French, who have always known how to make movies about affairs, would creep into the American equivalent. That's what these stories of middleaged, middle-class sexual adventure require. Instead, the guilts alternate with the smirks, and the only acceptable mood in which the characters may venture forth is a tiresomely adolescent one.

In A Change of Seasons, Anthony Hopkins plays a glum college teacher having an affair with one of his students (Bo Derek, who is splendid-looking, of course, but whose blankness of eye and manner makes one long to see her admission test). When his wife (Shirley MacLaine) discovers this lapse, she immediately takes up with a young carpenter (Michael Brandon), whose brain has been dulled by an overdose of Consciousness III. Soon they all edgily repair to a country house. There they scandalize the married couple's daughter, who drops by with some problems of her own, and Derek's father, who is a roue of a more traditional, but hardly more joyous sort. In the end, things work out rather badly for all concerned.

Anyone going to see A Change of Seasons should not be late; the title sequence offers some fetching glimpses of Derek nude in a hot tub--a sort of "10"-type poster that moves. Beyond that, the film is adequately summarized by one character, who complains of being caught up in "a sleazy farce."

--R.S.

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