Please don't spend money on this.

i must have seen a different film!!

Absolutely Fantastic

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The Plot. A wife unhappy in her marriage begins an affair with an art student, unaware that her husband, a race driver, is also having an affair.Yikes. Crazy Karen Black stars in what appears to be a TV movie but it's not. It's just directed that way. Cheaply.Black still had a good body when this was made. She must have been a firecracker in bed during her prime.Alas, Black's enormous jugs do not a movie make and soon you will be bored out of your mind. This happens about 19 minutes in.

SEPARATE WAYS feels like a TV movie version of the kind of film that KRAMER VS KRAMER was - i.e., a slow-moving drama about a marriage in trouble. The plot involves Karen Black, who plays an unhappy housewife who begins an affair with a much younger man. Problems arise as it transpires that her husband is also having an affair, and sparks fly when the truth is uncovered.This was put out by the notorious Crown International Pictures, so you might be forgiven for expecting this to be full of sleaze and depravity, but it's no such thing. In fact, even the sex and nudity is kept to a bare minimum. It's more of a dialogue-heavy drama, although sadly for me the material isn't really something that grips my attention. While it's nice to see Black in a straight role for a change, she was much more interesting in genre fare like TRILOGY OF TERROR, although a bunch of old-time actors like William Windom and even Sybil Danning do show their faces.

One of the strangest chapters in the history of Crown International Pictures was when they picked up the independently produced SEPARATE WAYS, a movie that had actually been completed in 1979 and sat in limbo for a while as the producers looked for a distributor. It was a strange choice for C.I.P. because while the movie is rated "R" and involves infidelity, it's not a sleazefest. It is actually a sober look at both partners in a troubled marriage. The movie is well acted by Karen Black and Tony Lo Bianco, and you can sense the filmmakers were really trying to make a compelling drama, but it doesn't quite work. It feels kind of dry, kind of like what a made-for-TV movie of the era would play out if it had "R" rated elements. It's not a terrible movie, just kind of flat. A word of warning if you plan to rent or buy the movie - while the movie has been given an official DVD release, the DVD company just copied an ex-rental video cassette instead of finding the movie's negative and making a copy directly from it.

Karen Black and Tony LoBianco star as a couple having marital difficulties. Will they be able to pull it together for their son? I came across this film as a part of a DVD collection of thrillers. Why it was included is beyond me since its not really a thriller rather its a domestic drama. That said its not a bad one. On some level I kept thinking that perhaps it was little more than a bumped up TV movie with some nudity and some foul language, however as time went on it kind of won me over and I actually wanted to see how it came.Far from the best film out there it is rather enjoyable on its own terms and is the sort of thing you won't mind watching if you are stuck watching it.