Summer of '42

Zeroing in (with much of Mulligan's usual quiet sympathy) on adolescence and the moment of sexual awakening with the added weight of The Way We Were type of nostalgia, this is a mess of contradictions. A surprising commercial success with its tale of the teenager and the unhappy war widow - as a sort of cry tough version of Love Story? - it forever misses, unlike American Graffiti, the heady sexual climate of adolescence to concentrate on the circumstances of the sex act itself.