AFS Presents: The Man Who Loved Women

DIRECTED BY BLAKE EDWARDS

Blake Edwards, USA, 1984, 35mm, 110 min

Blake Edwards adored Francois Truffaut’s 1977 film THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN and when the opportunity arose to “Americanize” the film with Burt Reynolds and Julie Andrews he seized it. This film will probably not make anyone forget Truffaut’s original, but it does have some pure Blake Edwards magic in it. Reynolds plays a Lothario at the end of his rope spiritually and sexually. During his sessions with a psychoanalyst (Andrews), he recounts his Casanova-like adventures in love. Edwards deftly finds the comedy in the contradictions of this smug yet insecure ladies man’s behavior, and in one major interlude, reaches his surest key – it’s a sequence taking place in Texas where the aggressive wife (Kim Basinger) of an oil millionaire takes Reynolds for a ride, or more properly, a series of rides. Also starring Marilu Henner. Cinematography by Haskell Wexler.