Consenting Adults

This faltering addition to Hollywood's yuppies in peril cycle starts better than it finishes. Jingle-writer Richard (Kline, wooden) and his supportive wife Priscilla (Mastrantonio) have every reason to be content with their lifestyle until 'financial adviser' Eddy (Spacey) and his improbably blonde partner Kay (Miller) arrive to upset the balance. Friendly relations are soon established, but 'neath the surface simmer sexual tensions which insurance scam-meister Eddy is all too keen to exploit, suggesting that he and Richard do the not-done thing by sleeping with each other's wives. The following day, police discover semen traces on Kay's battered body, and Richard is suddenly prime suspect in a murder case. His life disintegrates before his very eyes, and the movie follows suit. Twenty years after the taut Klute, Pakula's touch has deserted him; the glossy, literalist approach he favours here works firmly against the arrant contrivances in Matthew Chapman's screenplay, rendering already convoluted events even more ridiculous.