Caine plays a successful English novelist whose discontented wife, played by Jackson, decides to take a holiday to Germany in order to "find herself". There she meets a mysterious young man, played by Berger, in an elevator, which initiates an often bizarre, but extremely mature examination of desire, responsibility and the nature of love.
Elizabeth, bored wife of Lewis, a successful pulp writer in England, leaves husband and child and runs away to the German town of Baden-Baden. There she meets Thomas, who claims to be a poet but whom viewers know to be a petty thief, conman, drug courier, and gigolo. Though the two are briefly attracted to each other, she returns home. He, hunted by gangsters for a drug consignment he has lost, follows her to England. Lewis, highly suspicious of his wife, invites the young man to stay with them and act as his secretary. Initially resenting the presence of the handsome stranger, Elizabeth one night starts an affair and, after being caught together in the conservatory by Lewis, the two run away with no money to the south of France. Lewis follows them, he in turn being followed by the gangsters looking for Thomas. At the end the gangsters reclaim Thomas, presumably for execution, while Lewis reclaims Elizabeth.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 80% based on 5 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10.[3]AllMovie gave the film 3-and-a-half-stars-out-of-5.[4]
Home media
The Romantic Englishwoman was released on DVD and Blu-ray in North America by Kino Lorber on June 21, 2011.[5]
References
^ abChapman, J. (2022). The Money Behind the Screen: A History of British Film Finance, 1945-1985. Edinburgh University Press. p. 357. ISBN978-1399500777. Income is distributor's receipts, combined domestic and international, as at 31 Dec 1978.
