And yet it's airing on a Saturday

I mentioned yesterday that I've got another pair of movies showing up on TCM on the same day that are on my DVR and I haven't reviewed yet. The second of those movies is Sunday Bloody Sunday, which comes on tonight at 10:00 PM.

Peter Finch plays Daniel Hirsh, a Jewish doctor in what looks like one of the nicer parts of London. He sees a female patient who is in an unhappy marriage, and the incongruity of a man giving a wife marriage advice is evident. It becomes even more evident when the patient reminds the good doctor that he is in fact single.

Meanwhile, in another fashionable part of London, we meet Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson). She works at an executive employment agency, and is in some ways as lonely as Daniel, despite the fact that she's in a relationship with young artist Bob Elkin (Murray Head). The relationship starts in Alex's apartment, before the two decamp to look after the Hodsons, children of one of Alex's friends.

By this point, you wonder how the two main figures are connected? Dr. Hirsh looks out his window as a sculpture in his back garden, an intriguing sculpture of glass tubes filled with water in various colors that light up and bubble when the electric is turned on. The sculpture was conceived by... Bob, and Daniel calls him up for some maintence on the sculpture. He contacts Bob while Bob is with Alex, which only bothers her more for the fact that she'll be alone for a while, not because Daniel knows about the relationship.

Indeed, after working on the sculpture, Bob goes up to the second floor of Daniel's house and... sleeps with Daniel! Yeah, Daniel is gay and Bob is bi, sleeping with both Alex and Daniel. And as it later transpires, all three parties know about both relationships, and all three seem to be able to deal with it about as well as could be expected. We also discover that Daniels is friends with the Hodsons too and that they're fully aware of the relationships, being broadminded bohemians. (So broadminded, in fact, that two of the kids smoke a joint despite their very young age.)

Of course, the relationships are not going to be smooth sailing by a long shot. Daniel heads out one evening and is accosted by a former lover who is a heroin addict. And when Daniel doesn't want to deal with this guy, he responds by banging on the window of Daniel's car, a sort of blackmail that still existed despite the laws being changed after Dirk Bogarde's Victim. Daniel's and Alex's respective families also both question them about their personal lives, not so much because they know about the threesome, but because they see people not in a permanent relationship who in their view should be. And of course in Daniel's case, this being the early 1970s the presumption is that none of Daniel's family know he's gay.

The bigger snag comes when Bob has an opportunity to go over to the United States and install some of his sculptures for paying customers in America. It's a great opportunity, and as much as he says he'd only be away for a little while, the much more likely outcome is that it would mean the end of his relationships with both Daniel and Alex, even if on amicable terms.

Sunday Bloody Sunday is a well-made movie, with very good performances by both Finch and Jackson. For me, however, the movie had a problem with the script. The characters all left me cold, and at times it felt like the script was hard to follow. It took me a while to get what everybody's relationship with the Hodsons was, and some of the subplots didn't quite make sense to me either.

Sunday Bloody Sunday picked up several Oscar nominations, and watching it it's not hard to see why. But at the same time I can see why other stuff won. Sunday Bloody Sunday feels like a bit of a slog to watch at times, largely because of the emotional distance of the characters.