Plot
In Vienna, Milena (Russell), a young American woman in her twenties, is rushed to the emergency room after apparently overdosing. With her is Alex Linden (Garfunkel), an American psychiatrist who lives in the city as a teacher. Through a myriad of fragmented flashbacks, the narrative depicts the story of their romance, which ultimately amounts to an unhealthy sexual obsession on the part of Alex. Through these developments, Milena is revealed to suffer from depression while still being married to a much older man (Elliott), whom she occasionally crosses the border to see during the course of her affair with Alex. Though Linden initially enjoys her free spirited ways, he grows tired of, and embittered at her lifestyle, which includes impulsive promiscuity and heavy drinking. Through spying on Milena, Alex becomes emotionally strained, and eventually tries to control her — leading to horrifying results, due in large to very bad timing. Throughout, at the hospital where medics fight to save Milena's life, an investigator (Keitel) comes to realise that there may be more to her case than a simple suicide attempt. He probes, and once the truth lies brutally clear, tries to corner Alex into a confession of the possible crimes involved with Milena's accident.
Read more about this topic: Bad Timing
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)