Here's a picture that goes for visual mood, tone and color and achieves it, only to leave its characters floundering around trying to figure out what they're supposed to do and be. What we wind up with is a mass identity crisis, and a heavy-handed look at the sexual politic. That's the key fault with Woman In Love, a husband busts hump, wife feels unfulfilled tale of infidelity. Not the best from a terrific director.

Richard Bolla feels he should be working his slide rule to death (he's an engineer) to give his wife Samantha Fox all the creature comforts. The wife feels she needs some romance in the guise of erotic sexcapades. She has a fling with artist Ron Jeremy who thinks he should be lying and cheating to achieve best form. Jeremy, here, gives a better account of himself in straight-on acting than cracking wise in some lame humor situation. But it's no go with Jeremy, a cad, and Fox moves on to try fulfillment with Vanessa Del Rio who owns a high fashion boutique and gives away 30% discounts for a quick fanny feel; better discounts for more passionate embraces. Paul Thomas chimes in by throwing some pretty limp orgies that beg for the wild sex that never happens. There's plenty of couplings, but you get the feel you're watching all of it in a library. Everything's austere, restrained, and everyone's shushing you to keep quite. Or so it seems.

Another major weakness is there's nothing about these characters ingratiating or sexually appealing. They whine, they connive. Fox is supposed to be a reasonably mature woman in this plot but has no more of a grasp of life than some cheesehead on the beach. The husband is supposed to be smart, but his two minute drill in the bedroom is killing his marriage. And so it goes down the line. This kind of stuff works to a degree in mainstream pictures, but in adult films you're supposed to develop some kind of sexual empathy with the cast, not antagonism. With Woman In Love I feel like I got a cold fish.