"Hank" (Fredric Forrest) and girlfriend "Frannie" (Terri Garr) seem to have one of those relationships that is on, then it's off, then it's on again. After five years of this, there's some love there, but there's also loads of restlessness and it's ultimately that which drives them apart. She hooks up with the swarthy "Ray" (Raul Julia) while he takes a shine to "Leila" (Nastassia Kinski). It's this latter relationship that proves the marginally more entertaining in this otherwise unremarkable drama. "Leila" works in a circus and is regularly performing death-defying feats in a big top that is clearly just an huge sound stage. There we hit on what makes this film a little more notable - it has all been filmed on a stage. It's very much presented as if it were a stage play, even down the lighting fades and the use of music to help get us from one scenario to the other. The production design and technical effects work well to create that image but they can't compensate for a really thin story that neither Garr nor Forrest really add very much too. A sort of five-year-itch romance that rarely raises a laugh and looks entirely fake from start to finish. Whilst I don't doubt that was the aim of Francis Ford Coppola it merely seems to serve his own ambitions to prove he can make something quite this faux-continuous and sterile, rather than aspire to actually engaging with the audience on any meaningful level. It's under-written and under-developed from a character perspective and try as I did, I just didn't much care for it - one way or the other.
