Rent Bad Timing (1980)

Bad Timing for me - Bad Timing review by CP Customer

This was a disappointment after seeing the film in my youth. It was disjointed, nonarrtive structure and I foundit difficlut thus to get engaged with the weird conversations. Not my style at all. The director couln't take the camera off Art Garfunkel whose face is interesting but ....it just ddind;t deliver. I didn't like or engage with the heresa Russell character though she was obviulsy dangerously loopy. It was the film that beame boring and unengagin and in fact, I went to sleeep before the end. Very disappointing and for me, this was "Bad timing" in the sense that it was a waste of time.

Mad Love - Bad Timing review by Steve

Complex arthouse psychodrama from Nicolas Roeg's classic period. So there are his usual preoccupations, including the non-linear narrative. And while this isn't difficult to navigate, some attention is rewarded by the ultra-expressive juxtaposition of images, and the outré thematic connections.

Which may feel like homework... but the pessimistic atmosphere and the delirious conclusion make this linger in the memory. Art Garfunkel plays an American research psychiatrist in Vienna tangled up in a convoluted affair with a promiscuous free-spirit (Theresa Russell). His fixation is more like surveillance than love...

While doctors save her life following an overdose, a saturnine Austrian cop on the nightshift (Harvey Keitel) investigates, which takes us into into the darkness of the academic's obsession*. And contributes some noirish fatalism. This is mostly told from the jilted lover's perspective and he's obviously an unreliable narrator...

The odd rock and pop soundtrack is a minor negative.  And Roeg doesn't get nearly as much out of Vienna as he did from Venice in Don't Look Now (1973). Garfunkel and Keitel fail to engage, though Russell is electrifying. Still, for anyone who appreciates the director's unique oeuvre, this is close enough to his peak.

*There is a realistic sexual assault.