Fashion designer Julia is tired of living because she is suffering from malignant cancer. When she leaves for her last holiday in Cortina d'Ampezzo, she meets the vital Valerio. The two fall in love instantly, but Julia does not reveal her secret to Valerio. When Valerio learns that she's dying, he pretends to know nothing, continuing the love affair until the end.
A Place for Lovers opened to generally negative reviews. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it the "most godawful piece of pseudo-romantic slop I've ever seen!"[4] and Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times referred to it as "the worst movie I have seen all year and possibly since 1926."[5]Rex Reed wrote that the film "[l]ooks not so much directed as whittled to death." Time magazine called the film "Woefully inept ... Marcello Mastroianni displays all the zest of a man summoned up for tax evasion. The five scriptwriters who supposedly worked on the film must have spent enough time at the water-cooler to flood a camel." Katherine Caroll's review in the New York Daily News called the film "about as exciting to watch as a game of tiddly-winks."[6] Critic Manny Farber stated that "one of the best laughs is watching Dunaway working on the subject of despair."[7]
