Making Love

A film set in Los Angeles. Zack is a doctor. Claire works in television. They have been married eight years and their marriage looks good. They are buying a house. They are thinking about a child. Zack meets a patient. Bart is a writer; he refuses attachment and says so plainly. Zack has his first relationship with a man. From there the film takes all three people seriously. Claire is made a fool of in no scene and the narrative gives her side in full. Zack does not tell his wife. He comes home late, lies, and she understands something has changed. The scene where he tells her is the centre. The conversation is long and both sides are right. Bart's line says something separate. He does not want Zack; he does not want to live inside a relationship, and this is not drawn as a flaw. What the narrative is interested in is not sexual orientation but marriage: the film treats a woman having to rebuild her own life as at least as important as her husband's story. It came out of a major studio. A 20th Century Fox film; the screenplay is by Barry Sandler and A. Scott Berg. Casting was hard. Fifteen actors turned down the part of Zack; among those Arthur Hiller approached were Tom Berenger, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, William Hurt and Peter Strauss. It went in the end to Michael Ontkean. At the screenings of 12 February 1982 the houses turned. Audiences booed at the first kiss and some of them walked out. Harry Hamlin has since said the part damaged his film career. Michael Ontkean, Kate Jackson, Harry Hamlin and Wendy Hiller are in the cast. Arthur Hiller directed. Who it is for: anyone curious about the moment American cinema looked at the subject directly for the first time. Who it is not for: anyone expecting hardness; the narrative is deliberately soft, its language belongs to its period, and it looks over-careful today.