Two for the Road

Old-fashioned romantic comedy tricked out with some new-fangled ideas. Donen does some tricksy time-jumping between past and present as a couple (Hepburn and Finney) look back over their twelve years of marriage, while Frederic Raphael's script provides some crisply disillusioned dialogue for their quarrels. The trouble is that smart direction and smart dialogue slide off the glossily idealised couple like water off a duck's back. Arid, crowd-pleasing stuff, in which the soul-searchings take place very conveniently on annual holidays in France and in a variety of luxuriously furnished interiors.