Bad Timing
Bad Timing is a 1980 British psychological drama film. It was directed by Nicolas Roeg and starred Art Garfunkel, Theresa Russell, Harvey Keitel, and Denholm Elliott. Set in Vienna and largely told through nonlinear flashbacks, the film chronicles the torrid affair between two Americans—Milena, a depressive young woman, and Alex, a psychoanalyst—as uncovered by a detective investigating Milena's apparent suicide attempt.
The film was adapted by the American playwright Yale Udoff from the Italian story Ho Tentato Di Vivere by Constanzo Constantini. Bad Timing was filmed in the spring of 1979 on location in Vienna, London, Morocco, and New York City.
The film was controversial upon its release, being branded "a sick film made by sick people for sick people" by its own distributor, the Rank Organisation, whose executives were so disturbed by it that they removed their logo from the film's opening. In the United States, it was given an X rating which its producers unsuccessfully appealed, resulting in the decision to release the film there without a rating. It went unreleased on home video in the United States until 2005 when The Criterion Collection released a DVD edition, though it did attain a cult following with American audiences due to its frequent airings on television through the 1980s.
The film won the People's Choice Award at the 5th Toronto International Film Festival.
Plot
In Cold War Vienna, Milena Flaherty, a young American woman in her 20s, is rushed to the emergency room after apparently overdosing in a suicide attempt. With her is Alex Linden, an American psychoanalyst who lives in the city working as a university teacher. While doctors and nurses fight to save Milena's life, an investigator, Netusil, begins investigating the incident. Through fragmented flashbacks, the narrative depicts the story of Alex and Milena's romance.After meeting her at a party, Alex is enchanted by Milena, a sophisticated but free-spirited military brat. The two begin a whirlwind affair, but shortly into the relationship, Milena is revealed to suffer from severe depression and is married to a much older man, Stefan, whom she occasionally visits across the border in Bratislava. Though Alex initially enjoys Milena's free-spirited lifestyle, he soon becomes embittered by it, as it includes impulsive promiscuity and heavy drinking. Alex begins stalking Milena, and eventually confronts her about her marriage to Stefan. She insists that the marriage is simply platonic, and that she and Stefan are no longer in love. Despite this, Alex begins researching into Stefan's past, and inquires with local government agencies about how Milena can proceed with a divorce, which she refuses.
Alex's jealousy of Milena only continues to grow, and he begins to resent her. After one argument, Milena forcefully impels Alex to have sex with her to sate him, and is disgusted with herself after. In one incident, when the couple vacation in Morocco, their vehicle breaks down, and they hitch a ride from two Moroccan men. Alex is left in the bed of the truck, while Milena sits between the two men, flirting with them during the drive, which Alex keenly observes. Upon arriving in Ouarzazate, Alex suggests that he and Milena return to the United States where he can take a teaching position in New York City, but she insists that they live "in the moment."
Milena begins to question her and Alex's romance when she finds evidence that he has been treating her as a case study. Later, Alex confronts her about a photograph in her apartment that he has obsessed over, which shows her at a lake with another man. She tells him the photo is of her and her late brother, taken in California years prior, but Alex does not believe her. The following morning, Alex confronts a drunken Milena outside her apartment, telling her he cannot bear the thought of her with another man. When she defiantly renounces him, he slaps her. Later, Milena invites him back to her apartment, only to taunt him in kabuki makeup, mockingly presenting herself as the "new Milena." When he storms out, Milena screams at him from her balcony, hurling objects at him onto the street below. The following night, Milena leaves Alex a drunken voice message suggesting she wants to die.
In the present, as doctors attempt to revive the dying Milena, Netusil pieces together the chain of events, culminating in an interview with Alex, who presents himself simply as Milena's friend. Uncovering timeline inconsistencies in Alex's story, Netusil determines what actually occurred: Alex, after finding Milena overdosing on poison in her apartment, looked on as she slowly collapsed, and subsequently raped her once she lost consciousness. Though Netusil has physical evidence suggesting Milena was raped, he is unable to elicit a confession from Alex. Stefan arrives, and reveals Milena has survived the overdose following a life-saving tracheotomy. Alex departs without repercussion, but, before he leaves, Stefan comments that he must love Milena more than his own dignity.
Some time later, in New York, Alex sees Milena passing by in front of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel as he enters a taxi. He calls out to her, and she briefly turns toward him, revealing her tracheotomy scar, before impassively walking away.
Cast
Production
Development
The film was based on an Italian story by Constanzo Constantini called Ho Tentato Di Vivere. Roeg was shown it in the mid-1970s by producer Carlo Ponti. “It was given to me as a kind of longish idea, translated from Italian. It was very different, about two Italians, but it was the same basic idea, about that condition of man and woman."The story was adapted into a script by Yale Udoff, an American playwright. Udoff recalled: "It was about a wealthy Roman playboy and his girlfriend, and it was like an Alberto Moravia novel, but very bad Moravia, with a feel of the sixties. Although we changed almost everything, it did have a few elements we kept—it had an investigation into a murder. What interested Roeg was the idea of a couple in extremis, a man and a woman battling." The original screenplay and working title for the film was Illusions.
Roeg recalled "Yale and I worked very hard on it and we knew what we were going to do in terms of who the people were. But you can’t write every shot... The script is only one part of a film. I shoot a lot of stuff. With Bad Timing, I got back from Vienna and found that the set had been dressed. I love set dressing because to me it is part of the person. So I went out and bought books and things, to be part of the life of Helena, and re-dressed the set."
The film was one of the series of movies greenlit by Tony Williams at the Rank Organisation, who were increasing their production output. Rank made eight films over two years, being mostly conservative choices such as the 1978 film The Thirty-Nine Steps, the third adaptation of the 1915 novel. Bad Timing was the most unusual of the slate of films.
Roeg said "I thought everybody would respond to" the film. "It was about obsessive love and physical obsession. I thought this must touch everyone, from university dons down."
Casting
Roeg originally wanted to cast Bruno Ganz and Sissy Spacek in the leads. He eventually cast musician Art Garfunkel and Theresa Russell, whom Roeg later married. Roeg had envisioned Russell in the part of Milena, having been impressed by her performance in The Last Tycoon. The role of the inspector was rejected by Albert Finney and Malcolm McDowell was unavailable; Harvey Keitel was cast three days before filming.Filming
The film was shot over a ten-week period, with principal photography beginning in Vienna on 19 March 1979. After five weeks were completed in Vienna, filming continued through the spring of that year in London. Additional filming took place in Morocco, and finally, in New York City. Four days into the initial shoot, actors Garfunkel and Russell "begged" Roeg to leave the project. By Roeg's account:Garfunkel would later comment on the film's emotionally strenuous production: "I killed myself for that movie. I truly went all out to do as best I could. That film was no ordinary experience. Nick is no ordinary filmmaker, and the story is no ordinary story. What happened in my life during that film is no ordinary happening." Roeg recalled that while he was making the film, "Art Garfunkel came up to me and said he realized he was really playing me. But I told him that he was only part of it. I challenged him to decipher when I was wearing the trousers and when I was wearing the dress." During filming, Garfunkel's girlfriend, Laurie Bird, committed suicide in New York. Roeg later said the film "fucked up more people in my crew than anything else I’ve done. I know five people whose lives were turned over by that movie, including the cameraman, producer and executive producer. I’m kind of glad it got a limited release."
Near the end of the shoot, author Richard Bach sued the film's distributor, Rank Film Distributors, alleging that its title, Illusions, posed "unfair competition" against his recently released novel of the same name. Bach ultimately dropped the case after Roeg and the production company agreed to change the film's title to Bad Timing.
Post-production
While the film's screenplay was written in chronological order, significant editing was undertaken in post-production to center the narrative around Inspector Netusil's investigation into Milena's alleged suicide attempt, presenting the events leading up to the event in a fragmented, nonlinear manner. Like with many of Roeg's films, it notably features cross-cutting to link two different timelines of events.Roeg elaborated that the film "had a curious effect on people—I sort of understood afterwards why it wasn't good for the company. Funnily enough, while it was being made, someone said to me: 'You know, they're not going to eat this Nic, because you're scratching surfaces that people probably don't want to have exposed.' It was only towards the end, when we were cutting it and we showed it to the musician, who looks at the rough cut. And he said: 'Three years ago, I wouldn't have been able to work on this movie because I kept seeing myself on screen there, I was in that trap, in that hole'."