Torrents of Spring (1989)

It may be nothing more than highbrow cotton candy, but watching Timothy Hutton fall in and out of love with two beautiful women (while at the same time falling in and out of his vague Middle European accent) is an experience not without some incidental pleasure, silly as it is. Jerzy Skolimowski directed the multi-national (i.e. badly dubbed) cast, led by Hutton as a 19th century Russian aristocrat who (talk about bad luck) loves and loses both Valeria Golino and Nastassia Kinski. One is passionate and beautiful, the other is beautiful and passionate, and it's difficult to feel sorry for Hutton's mortal anguish in choosing between them The film abruptly ends just when the plot is beginning to thicken, but who needs narrative integrity with such romantic coffee table scenery, of ruined abbeys at dusk or horse drawn carriages gliding through misty tree-lined boulevards? The purple title and lush period setting make the film (based on an Ivan Turgenev story) a near perfect guilty pleasure, and it should be approached as such.

I'd like to read what women think of this feature. Every review I've seen so far completely misses the point including Roger Ebert's dead-wrong pan. Courage of conviction and lack of it bridge to each other here, though at different levels for different characters for very different reasons. The hues are gorgeous, and the music marries nicely. Experience this one your self. I've known very few people who have made similar choices in there lives and lived with those choices, so I'm not surprised that so many reviewers can't understand these characters. I would have stopped at "...music marries nicely..." but there is a ten line minimum.

This is a gorgeous movie. The photography is stunning. It develops stealthily into an unwilling and conflicted dual romance filled with good intentions, courage and traps. The participants confront their angels, then their equivalent personal demons. Later on, Sanin's (central male character) conflicts are portrayed as a subconscious journey in an eerie dreamland in which he tries to cope with inner conflicts and mysteries, and which, in the end, he is helpless to resolve, finally becoming totally dependent on time to do this for him. He is, despite all his worldly courage and altruism, weak in those things he loves most, paradoxically so, because they mean so much to him.The romantic scenes are intensely erotic, expanded more so, because of the beautiful photography.... even the sounds amplify the mood. This romantic and heroic Russian classic is a timeless story. Put it on film together with beautiful women, gorgeous photography, a far away place and time, and you have a film I think you will enjoy watching, and which may also have you asking a lot of questions about later.

This is an extremely amateurish, ham-handed film, with lousy accents, stilted dialogue, and a waste of the unconvincing Timothy Hutton as a disillusioned Russian nobleman (!!!)Valeria Golino is beautiful, but her character awfully two dimensional - and nobody could possibly believe Nastassja Kinski's hardboiled seductress. The entire film has that cheesy pan-European soft-focus quality found usually on late-night premium cable channels, but with a little less gratuitous nudity.However, there is a lovely scene wherein Nastassja and Timothy go to visit a Gypsy camp and dance around with ever-increasing attraction to one another. The music is fabulous, and there isn't much of the aforementioned crappy dialogue. If I could find just that scene on DVD, I'd buy it. Otherwise, give this one a pass.