Goodbye Again

This week sees the third night of Ingrid Bergman's turn as TCM's Star of the Month. She also got a day in Summer Under the Stars, which gave me the chance to catch one of her films I hadn't seen before, Goodbye Again. It's coming up overnight at 3:00 AM, so I made a point of watching it to do a review on here.

Bergman plays Paula Tessier, an interior designer living in Paris, and making enough money that she can have a maid of her own and live in a fairly fashionable (at least for the Paris of 1960) apartment. She's also got a boyfriend in the form of Roger Demarest (Yves Montand), who imports and exports farm tractors. It's a job that has him on the go, and one of the things that has kept him from proposing marriage to Paula. That, and the fact that he always seems to have a woman on the side that Paula doesn't know about.

One of Paula's new clients is a wealthy American woman, Mrs. Van der Besh (Jessie Royce Landis). She's got an adult son Philip (Anthony Perkins) who is learning the trade of international law, working for a firm that has offices in New York, Paris, and London. Presumably young Philip, as an American, is going to learn enough about operating in the European legal system to be able to go back to New York and liaise with the European side of things from there.

But that's not so important right now. In one of the most original plot twists imaginable, Philip finds himself immediately liking this much older woman, something which would have been mildly scandalous back in 1960 when such women weren't called cougars. And Paula, not getting enough attention from Roger, finds herself liking the attention that young Philip is giving her.

As I said, however, there are some problems. One of course is the fact that Paula is already in what is supposed to be a serious relationship. Then there's the age difference, which is liable to cause problems for Philip in his legal career. And if he has to go back to America, what are he and Paula going to do? All of it leads to Philip being showing a bit of circumspect in the relationship, but not so much so that nobody knows what's going on. Mom likes Paula professionally, but the idea of Paula and Philip having a romantic relationship, well that just won't do. And what will Roger do when he realizes what's going on?

There's not a whole lot new going on in Goodbye Again, although I suppose it may have been a bit new for the audiences of the early 1960s. Still, it's well enough acted that the acting does overcome the now trite plot. In some ways, it's too bad that it's not in color to give us some lovely color and widescreen looks at Paris as it was in 1960. Goodbye Again is the sort of movie that's good to tick off one's list of movies to watch for a completist, but certainly not the best in the career of any of the main stars.