Libido

Three episodes dealing, more or less, with the theme of infidelity. The Husband, directed by Murray, is a depressingly flat and unimaginatively shot venture into trendy married life. The Child is a studiously evocative period piece, based on a story by Hal Porter that ends up a direct crib of The Go-Between, with no point beyond proving that Tim Burstall can direct with a trace less vulgarity than he showed in Stork or Alvin Purple. The Family Man, written by David Williamson, is the best of the three, managing to at least begin to explore inter-personal tensions and latent sexual aggressions. The women picked up by the appalling male duo (cruising while the wife of one is in hospital giving birth) are drawn in a strongly idiosyncratic way; finally, though, the piece falls clumsily between TV drama, fringe theatre, and Cassavetes-style cinéma vérité. A fourth story, written by Thomas Keneally and directed by Fred Schepisi, has been excised.