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Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession

Original title: Bad Timing
  • 19801980
  • RR
  • 2h 3m
IMDb RATING
6.9/10
9.2K
YOUR RATING
Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
Watch Official Trailer
Play trailer2:44
1 Video
29 Photos
DramaMysteryThriller
A psychiatrist, living in Vienna, enters a torrid relationship with a married woman. When she ends up in the hospital from an overdose, an inspector becomes set on discovering the demise of ... Read allA psychiatrist, living in Vienna, enters a torrid relationship with a married woman. When she ends up in the hospital from an overdose, an inspector becomes set on discovering the demise of their affair.A psychiatrist, living in Vienna, enters a torrid relationship with a married woman. When she ends up in the hospital from an overdose, an inspector becomes set on discovering the demise of their affair.
IMDb RATING
6.9/10
9.2K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • Nicolas Roeg
  • Writer
    • Yale Udoff(screenplay)
  • Stars
    • Art Garfunkel
    • Theresa Russell
    • Harvey Keitel
  • Director
    • Nicolas Roeg
  • Writer
    • Yale Udoff(screenplay)
  • Stars
    • Art Garfunkel
    • Theresa Russell
    • Harvey Keitel
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 72User reviews
    • 64Critic reviews
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 3 wins

    Videos1

    Official Trailer
    Trailer 2:44
    Watch Official Trailer

    Photos29

    Theresa Russell and Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
    Christopher Walken and Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
    Harvey Keitel and Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
    Theresa Russell and Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
    Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
    Theresa Russell and Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
    Theresa Russell and Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
    Harvey Keitel, Art Garfunkel, and Eugene Lipinski in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
    Theresa Russell and Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
    Harvey Keitel in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
    Theresa Russell and Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
    Theresa Russell in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Art Garfunkel
    Art Garfunkel
    • Alex Linden
    Theresa Russell
    Theresa Russell
    • Milena Flaherty
    Harvey Keitel
    Harvey Keitel
    • Inspector Netusil
    Denholm Elliott
    Denholm Elliott
    • Stefan Vognic
    Daniel Massey
    Daniel Massey
    • Foppish Man
    Dana Gillespie
    Dana Gillespie
    • Amy Miller
    William Hootkins
    William Hootkins
    • Col. Taylor
    Eugene Lipinski
    Eugene Lipinski
    • Hospital Policeman
    George Roubicek
    George Roubicek
    • Policeman #1
    Stefan Gryff
    • Policeman #2
    Sevilla Delofski
    • Czech Receptionist
    Rob Walker
    Rob Walker
    • Konrad
    • (as Robert Walker)
    Gertan Klauber
    Gertan Klauber
    • Ambulance Man
    Ania Marson
    Ania Marson
    • Dr. Schneider
    Lex van Delden
    • Young Doctor
    Rudolf Bissegger
    • Giovanni
    • (as Rudolph Bisseger)
    Hans Christian
    • Czech Consul
    Ellan Fartt
    • Ulla
    • Director
      • Nicolas Roeg
    • Writer
      • Yale Udoff(screenplay)
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Director Nicolas Roeg and actress Theresa Russell fell in love during the shoot and married. Russell was 22 years old at that time, while Roeg was already 52 years old. They had two children, but divorced later.
    • Goofs
      Near the beginning of the movie, when the Czechoslovakian border guard checks the names on his list, the list contains several Czech swear words instead of personal names and occupations ("Mrdac", "Kurevnik", "Prdelac"...).
    • Quotes

      Milena Flaherty: I'll be dead in a minute; just wanted to say good-bye.

    • Alternate versions
      The BBFC made one cut to the film in the UK before theatrical release. The cut footage juxtaposes an image of lovemaking with a shot of a child. This was re-edited into separate shots due to concerns about the Child Protection Act, and all versions available worldwide are the re-edited version.
    • Connections
      Featured in Lights, Camera, Action!: A Century of the Cinema: Let's Make Love (1996)
    • Soundtracks
      Berceuse
      Sung by Vernon Midgley

      Music by Benjamin Goddard (uncredited)

    User reviews72

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    8/10
    a well-accomplished, counter-cultural, innately candid examination on modern relationship and sex philosophy
    Nicolas Roeg's little-circulated relationship dissertation between an American psychiatrist Alex Linden (Garfunkel) and a young American woman Milena (Russell) in Cold War Vienna has an uncanny and scandalizing paralleled real life happening befalls on its leading actor Art Garfunkel.

    After its glittering opening sequences of a Gustav Klimt's exhibition, the film starts with an unconscious Milena rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night accompanied by Alex in the ambulance, ostensibly from an overdose, and in reality, during the film's shooting, Garfunkel's then girlfriend Laurie Bird, committed suicide by taking an overdose of Valium in New York, aged 26.

    With that hindsight, one is prone to understand Garfunkel's sometimes perversely surly and tangibly perturbed state when facing off with either a barnstorming Russell or a probing Harvey Keitel, who plays Inspector Netusil, exerts himself in teasing out the truth out of a buttoned-up Alex, as the film's title refers, the timing of Alex's recount about the incident doesn't comply with the physical facts (car radio, Milena's state, etc.).

    Predominantly, Roeg expertly expounds Alex and Milena's torrid affair by punctuating its aftermath story-line with stacks of flashback in a random arrangement, from the starting point when Milena says farewell to her much older Czech husband Stefan Vognic (Elliott) in the Czech/Austria border, to the pair's encounter, dating, a Northern Africa vacation (prompts Alex's proposal of marriage), to the toxic disintegration due to their incongruity (Lüscher's color test Vs. Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky, are the obvious visual pointers). It seems that it is Alex who breaches his work ethic to strike the romance with his client in the first place, then we are repeatedly subjected to the disappointment of Alex's incompetency of his own profession, his botched attempt to understand a freewheeling Milena's psychological status, which can be encapsulated in one sentence (I'm paraphrasing here) "to love a woman tremendously, to love her more than one's own dignity", a pitfall hounds most men in our patriarchal society. But meanwhile, Roeg and screenwriter Yale Udoff also show up the mercurial side of Milena's persona, she professes to be a free-spirited soul, morally unattached, physically liberated, but more often than not, she is the one who backslides into pestering Alex after their breakup, which trenchantly confounds that very statement. It is a self-destructive game which takes two to tango, a woman's congenital insecurity meets a man's unrelieved self-regard, that's what Roeg rams home to us albeit his very distracting M.O.

    Honestly, it is a mind-bending journey, strewn with zeitgeist reflecting tunes (Billie Holiday, Tom Waits, The Who and counting), where the two leads engaging in graphic sexual acts (and they are nowhere near aesthetically pretty), or exchanging their thoughts in soft-focus treatment. Meantime, the apparently persisting investigation from Netusil, eventually reaches its lurid conclusion without ever sweetening the pills, it nails the psychological nitty-gritty in the face of its morally repugnant revelation.

    BAD TIMING, a pertinent name for its own ill-fated reception upon its release, is a well- accomplished, counter-cultural, innately honest examination on the caprice, intransigence, and ambivalence of modern relationship and sex philosophy, powered by strong performances, in particular, a spontaneously ravishing Theresa Russell.
    helpful•5
    1
    • lasttimeisaw
    • May 5, 2017

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • October 25, 1980 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • United Kingdom
      • United States
    • Languages
      • English
      • German
      • Czech
      • French
    • Also known as
      • Blackout - Anatomie einer Leidenschaft
    • Filming locations
      • 2 Schönbrunner Schloßstraße, Vienna, Austria(Milena's apartment, now demolished)
    • Production companies
      • Recorded Picture Company (RPC)
      • The Rank Organisation
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      2 hours 3 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.35 : 1

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