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The quintessence of '70s dreck, albeit with one and a half feet stuck in the '60s. Swinging London was already a faded memory in 1972 (and the spectacle of Dame Margaret Leighton in a see-through blouse did nothing to inspire nostalgia for it). More to the point, the consider-the-possibilities algebra of the title and the central casting of Liz Taylor as Zee, a game-playing virago of a wife, suggest a wishful revamp of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), without a Richard Burton to supply wit, grace, and feeling. Even Michael Caine, who plays Zee's feckless architect husband, seems to be coasting on rueful memories of Alfie (1965). Out of bored habit more than passion, Caine erotically targets Susannah York, a vague country wife who may or may not be a widow. They begin an affair. Zee cottons on right away and does her utmost to play both ends against her full-figure-gal middle. Taylor's bitch-queen act lends a certain verve; she barges about the screen in a wardrobe of multicolored, tent-like horrors that suggest, oh, Genghis Khan in Arabia. It's a measure of the film's muddled sense of itself that Zee's early description of her rival--"a soulful slob [who's] always a little out of breath and sees beauty in everything"--is dead-on about the character and the normally lively Susannah York's performance.
Zee (like Virginia Woolf's Martha) is childless, and Edna O'Brien's script underscores how often the three principals call one another "baby." We won't tip the surprise-twist climax, but the ending is the nadir of '70s pseudo-sophistication, mindless technique mongering, and cluelessness masquerading as "adult" ambiguity. Not one freeze frame but a dozen... overlapped... with zooms in and out, yet. Turn on the lava lamps, get out the throw cushions, zap the microwave popcorn--this is a definitive trash wallow. --Richard T. Jameson
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