A romantic thriller several polite steps from pornography. Given the conceptual starting point -- a married woman has her secret diaries stolen, along with much else, by a professional burglar, who then presents himself to her as the fantasy lover depicted there -- it could have gone either way. In the way chosen by writer-director Douglas Day Stewart, much time is frittered away in the effort to establish both plausibility and the moral scrupulousness of the heroine. But plausibility and moral scruple would seem in the present context to be at cross-purposes. The most obvious way to heighten the one would be to lower the other. Stewart, however, is intent on putting over his heroine as Everywoman, or at least as a svelte and elegant magazine-ad version of Everywoman, and thus he must fight for her reputation. If the woman is to remain Someone To Identify With (rather than ever to become a singularized and independent entity), it is apparently essential that she not realize that this swarthy stranger is the thief; it is essential instead that the thief make use of his readings as a guidebook in How To Please A Woman and enter her life as a Dream Come True. Home-wrecking is one thing, housebreaking quite another. If, on the other hand, the woman had known the man was the thief and hence had known he knew everything there was to know about her, if this in itself excited her, if she was only too willing to continue as scriptwriter-director-star of her own enacted fantasies, and if he was willing to play along as a good trouper, then plausibility might have made a quick recovery. It is one of those rare cases where the demands of plausibility and those of pornography go hand in hand. Steven Bauer, Barbara Williams. (1984) — Duncan Shepherd
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