Horrible muddled adaptation of a compelling short story. Donald Sutherland plays John Baxter who restores old Venetian churches or something like that. Julie Christie plays his wife. Both of them are actually pretty good and close to how Du Maurier wrote the original characters. But soon enough we're subjected to a bizarre, extended sex scene that is inter-cut with footage of the couple getting dressed. Not only does this make absolutely no sense, we also have to look at Donald Sutherland's bony ass for six or seven minutes. There's other strange scenes and confusing red herrings thrown in that really do nothing to advance the story, including a slightly sinister Catholic bishop who wasn't in the original source material. The religious imagery and aspects to this film keep suggesting that it's about to turn into something like The Omen, but it never does, which is a shame, because even an Omen rip-off would have been more welcome than this thing. The director would have done better to follow the original story a bit closer - if you haven't read it, you'll be lost watching this mess and you'll have to be content with enjoying on-location footage of early 1970s Venice, Italy, which is one of this film's few redeeming qualities.
Review of Don't Look Now
