Disturbing yet enthralling

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Paul Mazursky's completely wonderful journey of a woman from happy, married life to being single. Jill Clayburgh plays Erica, a woman who seems to have the perfect existence. One day, without warning, her perfect life unravels completely. The film follows her odyssey into divorce and recovering from it. What's even more great is that the film does not forget to be funny while not losing its ability to move. This is Jill Clayburgh's finest hour. Alan Bates is the perfect actor to play Erica's love interest. I kept imagining his Rupert character from Women in Love being presented with another kind of woman. Not a false note in the whole film. One of the best movies of the '70s.

Jill Clayburgh gives an off-the-wall performance in this 1978 film dealing with a woman who must confront the fact that her husband has walked out on her. After seemingly having the perfectly married life with a precocious daughter, Clayburgh is forced to re-enter life in a time of sexual revolution in America.Michael Murphy is superb as her husband who walks out on her, and there is fine support from Cliff Gorman, the guy who knows the score and Alan Bates, who steals the film as Saul Kaplan, the rebel artist who got his inspiration for expressionism when his mother threw a pickled herring at his father! The film, before the entrance of Bates, depicts men as overly obsessive sex fiends who will go to any length to make a conquest. While the Kaplan figure goes from that description, Clayburgh suddenly becomes an independent woman.Penelope Russianoff, who had a Ph.D in psychology in real life, portrays the therapist that Clayburgh goes to when Murphy walks out. For a non-actress, she is perfect for the part since she is in every sense of meaning, a true therapist.Finding fault with a basically good film that should have been better may be shown by the inconsistencird of the Clayburgh performance. Her Jewish-American attributes at the beginning get a rude awakening when Murphy walks out. Yet, she goes through a period of shock and desire to cling to something only to boldly claim her independence as a woman.The ending of the film is a definite disappointment. Erica (Clayburgh) again proves that as a scorned woman, she hesitates to re-enter life and will, if anything, be subordinate to it.

I did not feel pity for a divorcée who still lived as she did when the wealthy husband was still living at home. Like many people stated, let's see a movie where a woman actually had to struggle to pay rent and feed her kid(s) when the man walked out. I can see why the husband wanted a little more out of life while his wife just flitted about town enjoying herself while he worked hard for his family. His wanting a younger woman who was fun was normal while she was too tired for sex most of the time.The therapist only encouraged depravity with the suggestion her client meet and experience as many men as possible. Casual sex did not seem to work for the divorcée so she hooked up with the artist far too quickly and was ready to give up her life for a man she really did not know. Even though the husband wanted to come back, the soon-to-be ex-wife did not think of her life and how she would become one of her pitiful friends. Instead, she was too infatuated with the sexual attention which was detrimental to her daughter.The ending was bunk. I found it rude for the English artist to blithely tell his girlfriend/whatever to take a cab or something to get that huge painting home. She looked ridiculous walking the streets with it and the guy was gone...gone...gone! IMNSO, she should have taken back her husband. So what if he had an affair. How she behaved afterward was no better with bedding her co-worker and then the artist she knew for maybe an hour. All she was going to get as a single mom was a life of degradation.Feminism was to show women to be strong but to not lose our self-respect by giving ourselves to any man who was interested.

She was an unmarried woman, she used to be married with a man who left their 16 years marriage for another young woman. The disruption of their marriage began in a slow way, firstly no one awared there were some problems had emerged even when i watched this film and I slightly knew a bit of the gut beforehand but still thought they were quite good couple with a lovely daughter, but who knew, suddenly another woman she had never seen before brought her husband away, she was just a poor divorced woman being left behind.I like the scene when her husband abruptly told her the affair and decided to leave her. Like a thunderbolt, Jill Clayburgh's performance is heartbreaking and powerful! Life sometimes is so ridiculous, and mankind are always unsatisfying, we're inevitably getting tired of something old, trying to find something new, eventually find the old one is the perfect but what a shame! Not everyone has a second chance, and if you give someone one second chance, they know you can offer a third, fourth....and more. So don't be so cruel to yourself, The sky above is much bigger than your heart.She met a painter and developed a romantic relationship with him, they loved each other but the story did not end with another good marriage. At last, the painter left and she didn't follow him because she was still an unmarried but happy woman. She got a big painting from the painter as a souvenir of him and her growth.Very charming drama full of wisdom and humor, the whole story is not so comedy though. An excellent performance from Jill Clayburgh deserves her Oscar nomination that year. Alan Bates is drop-dead charming in this film. Also recommend the crooning piano score, especially ecstatic.