MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

verna-a As it's many years since I read the book I can't recall whether it had the same impression on me as the film, which was to profoundly depress me about the nature of man. The protagonist seems pretty much without redeeming features. He chases women in order to get them into bed, but seems to be basically hostile to them. He has friends in order to sponge off them. His sneering smile just makes me want to slap his face. I suspect however that this was not the intention of the film and we're really supposed to think he's quite a guy. In the context of the times the explicit language and sex scenes exploit a new permissiveness, but fundamentally it's an ugly and sexist depiction of men and women : the men trying to get sex with the minimum of commitment, and the women trying to pin the men down or get their money. It's really dated in this respect. On the plus side, I enjoyed the beautiful female bodies. The Parisian landscape shots also lift the ugliness from time to time.

SampanMassacre Henry Miller's rousing poetic pornography is brought to the screen in the form of Rip Torn as the controversial author wandering Paris from one situation to the next, either narrating Miller's words over various shots of the famous city, or dealing with, and suffering through, random confrontations with crazy women and even crazier men.Reminiscent of how Charles Bukowski's life would be attempted years later in BARFLY and FACTOTUM... stream-of-conscious odysseys never settling into one particular melodrama for too long... this film's progressively-racy dialog seems awkward and forced. Some of the side-actors don't fit the (for 1970) groundbreaking template, at times feeling like an X-rated episode of MARY TYLER MOORE.Torn, although not entirely believable as Miller, is intriguing to watch, and along with a few quick sexy scenes with Ellen Burstyn, solely owns this obscure curio that seems borrowed otherwise.

rlcsljo Amazingly enough, Rip Torn's slightly off beat personality pretty much carries this film through. He seems to have a "joie de vivre" that seems to perfectly capture the attitude of an american expatriate in Paris. Mostly he fantasizes about older (35+) woman and his real or imagined conquests of them. A few young girls would have helped this film immensely (See "Tales of Ordinary Madness").The older actresses were all very good and spewed forth sexuality, despite their "advanced" years.I am sorry I did not see this when it first came out.

Scoopy In order to appreciate Henry Miller's style, it is essential to get a feel for the juxtaposition of his elegant, often heartfelt prose, and the profane nature of his subject matter. He is the modern Catullus, the poet not of "lovemaking" but of the joys of flat-out *****ing.The movie had difficulty synthesizing this sense of sacred and profane in harmony. It tried now with a Rip Torn overvoice reading from Miller's work, then with some poetic shots of the beauty of Paris. It never really seemed to succeed.The movie could never find anything to focus on. It represents a string of vignettes, and they don't seem to lead to any common goal. Many scenes seem to concentrate on the minor characters for much too long, and without apparent purpose. Such picaresque efforts rely on the charm of characterization for impact, and this film has some of that, but not enough. It's structured as if somebody said "let's make a film of Tropic of Cancer" without actually feeling any passion for why they wanted to do that.It was certainly interesting to see Rip Torn so young and so good-looking, and to see Ellen Burstyn in such a flagrant display of nudity. Some of the locales are accurately evocative, and Torn is reasonably credible in the lead. It is fairly explicit in the sexual scenes, and extremely explicit in its use of language.You could watch it and not feel you've wasted your time, but be advised that you won't feel much rewarded, either.