Bad script, bad acting, bad directing. The list goes on and on (so does the movie, for more than two hours). No depth to these unsympathetic characters. Everyone smokes nonstop. Poor attempt at erotic overtones. Just nothing to recommend this snooze fest. Theresa Russell and Art Garfunkel can't act their way out of a paper bag. I suggest covering your head with one before watching this mess. And Criterion had the audacity to dignify this film?

I saw this originally sometime in the mid eighties and thought it was good. Now I appreciate it as a modern great. It doesn't date at all despite Garfunkle's hair and suits. Roeg tells a fairly simple story about complex emotions effecting complicated people and is well served by it's main protagonists and the actors he tasked to play them. The film is well paced and shown in non-linear interludes holding the viewer suspended, picking sides in a relationship and wondering about the consequences which are not fully revealed until the end. The style is typical of the director but that is no bad thing and if you want your cinema provocative and intelligently emotional this is a film you will want to see.

so when I saw this on NetFlix I figured it may be a decent film, suspense set in Vienna.She looks lovely, just prior to minor fame from "Black Widow" (starring with Debra Winger and Terry O'Quinn) where she was excellent as a gold digger and murderess.The sites are intriguing, she is a party girl who leaves a former older lover to date Art Garfunkel, psychiatrist. Yes, its dated in that Garfunkel is not exactly leading man material, even in the early 80's I do not think he was, but anyway.Basically as Milenia, Russell is enjoying her travels, and merely wants to party and have fun, sensual escapades and no strings. Garfunkel however begins to have contempt for her as she will not commit to being only with him.Some cinematography in Tangier is beautiful and sensual. The overall story doesn't work, but you may find it watchable if you are a fan of Russell. There is a twist at the end as well. 6/10

Roeg has a troubled mind. Or at least is fond of entering troubled minds. His biggest quality is something i value a lot in a filmmaker: he paints his canvas, but he also designates where we seat to look at it. He builds the atmosphere and makes us a spaceship to enter it. That's our feeling. But than there's something more interesting he does. We think we are comfortable as the designated watchers of what he depicts, but what he does, mostly through camera work and editing (which is great in this film) is trying to push us into the game, and going through the same risks and trouble of the characters in the film. That will to place the viewer at the center of what matters is commonly tried these days, but i think Roeg was a visionary in his days, and that includes this film.We have a psychoanalyst, which is a shortcut for saying he is someone who works relations inside out. He is obsessed, has retroactive jealousy, and the film is the evolution of how he fights himself to make a convenient story that allows him to be with the woman, something he eventually fails to do. We know how the thing ends from the beginning, so the film uses the form of allowing us to know the ending point and than driving as in flashback to that point. The editing is frantic and somehow psychedelic, something Roeg might have learned in his London 60' experience. And the intention was precisely to make our visual mind work like the troubled mind of Garfunkel's character.An extra significant point, something Ted Goranson really likes to notice, and which i'm starting to fall for is the empathy Roeg has with the actress, Theresa Russell, which would lead to marriage. You really can understand that. Her character is not the center of the story, it's all about Garfunkel, but we miss that unless we think about that. Garfunkel's character was at this point a representative of Roeg's urges for this beautiful woman.The film that best portrays this relation, and simultaneously is Roeg's best, to me, is Insignificance. This Bad Timing is one of his most celebrated, but it has minor power compared to the other one. It's a good experience, but i suggest you use it as an introduction to the other.My opinion: 3/5 http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com insignificance