Amos Kollek clearly had a premise for a movie: an abused woman must find enough money to settle an old debt and buy her estranged son from custody. But he didn't really have a plot to go with it. Bridget lurches from one relationship to another, and Kollek hopes that the idiosyncrasies and perversions of her acquaintances - a closet-lesbian spinster, a psychotic Vietnam veteran, a mentally disabled stalker and his terminally ill father - will patch over the tenuous, if non-existent links between them. No event is too improbable to work its way into the storyline, and Kollek keeps a straight face throughout, as if this is a portentous work demanding intense structural analysis.
The performances are generally sub-standard. Anna Levine, as Bridget, is alone able to communicate something of her character's desperation. That much of the plot depends on Bridget's supposed beauty, though, sits at odds with Levine's gaunt, pallid face and bony frame. Throughout the film Bridget looks unwell and disturbed. David Wike is laughable as the retarded Pete. Lance Reddick is on the wrong side of melodrama as hit-man Black. Julie Hagerty and a sinister Mark Margolis are well cast in their respective roles, but the threadbare narrative jumps beyond their characters before we are able to gain a greater insight into them.
Barely a scene rings true throughout the film, and the consistently hollow dialogue immediately suggests an imperfect grasp of English on the director's part. The delivery and intonation in many conversational scenes is uneven, and none of the characters convincingly relate to one another. Technically, too, the film disappoints. The lighting is off (particularly in external shots) and the sound is tinny - all testament to a meagre budget. The editing is just as careless - a shot near the end of the film shows Bridget's son as an infant, despite that fact that he should be well into adolescence by that point.
Kollek certainly had a couple of interesting if unoriginal ideas for this movie, but at every turn he is undermined by a preposterous story.
