Moral of the story: don't fuck with crazy. But who's the crazy one?
It's funny that Art Garfunkel's most famous performances have been in films that tackled sex with alarming frankness. Bad Timing, by Nicolas Roeg, is a beast of a movie. After all, this is from the guy who did Don't Look Now, a masterpiece with one of cinema's most iconic sex scenes.
We've seen stories of love affairs rattled by crazies before, but none quite like Bad Timing. Bad Timing has a non-chronological structure, and the order in which many events happen in is hazy. It certainly isn't helped by the fact that the movie's loose cannon, Milena (Theresa Russell) is so mercuric in temperament.
Bad Timing is almost always interesting. It begins with a suicide attempt by Milena, and her time in the hospital is cut with scenes showing her relationship with professor Alex Linden (Garfunkel). By having the movie built around an incident like a suicide attempt, Roeg is able to peel back layers to make his film's story richer as time passes.
There are no good guys. Everyone is out to hurt each other, and maybe that's Roeg's point. Art Garfunkel is surprising because who he plays is not the type of guy I expected he would. Theresa Russell, so unhinged and off-the-wall, finds a way to make herself not like a caricature.
Bad Timing is an ugly look at a relationship gone south. The weakest element of the movie is a subplot involving a detective (Harvey Keitel) investigating Linden's relationship with Milena, in an effort to find something more sinister at play.
A fair warning. though: the movie's handling of sex dives into an obsession, and what possibly could constitute as "rape". Yes, Art Garfunkel is on-screen naked. No, I did not need to see that in my life.
6.5/10
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