Mr & Mrs Bridge

In this adaptation of Evan S Connell's twin novels, Newman plays Mr Bridge, a distinguished Kansas City lawyer, and Woodward his wife. It is not a marriage of like minds: India Bridge is all caring and sharing, but hidebound Walter, though full of love for his family, dare not speak its name. The First World War is over and the second one coming, but Walter refuses to move with the times. In many ways the film is about disappointment: the disappointment children cause parents - fast-and-loose Ruth (Sedgwick) goes to New York to become an actress, and fails; Carolyn (Welsh) ends in divorce; Douglas (Leonard - the author Connell) cannot even bring himself to kiss mother - and the disappointment felt when spouses, friends and life itself fail to live up to expectation. The episodic outcome is disappointing, too. Newman is good and Woodward superb, but their moving portrayals exist in a vacuum of overpowering beauty. Stunningly photographed interiors and exteriors take the breath away, but their inhabitants seem almost irrelevant.