A Perfect Couple (1979)

Synopsis (very complete with juicy SPOILERS): Alex is a widower living with his father and siblings in a big house. Sheila is a singer in a band. The two meet through a dating agency. Their first date is a disaster - it rains and his car's sun roof won't shut - but in the end Alex impresses her with a big kiss in the mouth. They set up a second date, but she gets held up in a rehearsal and tells the parking lot guy to warn the "guy in a gray cadillac" that she will be late; since he is driving an orange car that night, he is never notified and waits outside her apartment building. When she arrives with her friends, he is fast asleep behind the wheel and doesn't see her. They later accuse each other of standing the other up; they have a big fight and split. Nevertheless Alex is still adamant in seeing her, though she has already set up a date with someone else. Alex shows up and has a fight with her new date. Sheila hits him in the head with a fire poker, rendering him unconscious. She takes him to the hospital where he gets stitches. She is sorry and they go back in good terms. One night, however, the two of them are in bed in her house when her roommates - who are the other members in her band - unexpectedly return. She explains to him that the two female singers in the band are a homosexual couple, and that one of them is pregnant of the male singer, a homosexual himself ("they were drunk"). He suggests they should leave and calls her friends "freaks". They go to his house and there they are caught in bed by his whole family, who starts an outcry of indignation. She gets very upset and says that they are the freaks, not her friends. She leaves in a state of rage, shouting "weirdos" to all the people in the house. He then decides to see other people and sets up a dinner date with a girl; afterwards she invites him to her house, and once there she leaves him alone in the living room for some instants; he starts noticing several kinky sex objects and literature, gets scared and leaves before she returns. One day at the decoration shop at which he works - which belongs to his father - a strange couple - who keeps showing up throughout the movie and whose function is to bring Alex and Sheila together, though they do not seem to be conscious of it - leaves a magazine with a story about Sheila's band's tour. He takes that as a sign of fate and decides to go after her. He arrives just after their bus has left and chases it, making it stop. He then talks to her and they make up, but the bus leaves with him still on it and thus he is forced to accompany them on the tour. After a few days on the road, he gets fed up with the lifestyle of the people around him and decides to go back to his family. Arriving there, he has a shock: his sister - who had a heart condition - has died and the funeral wake is taking place at that precise instant. He tries to talk to his relatives but is told that his father has disowned him and won't speak to him again. Next we see him packing his things, and then it cuts to a concert; we see Sheila walking towards where he is sitting; she sits beside him and they kiss.

Appraisal: Amiable romantic comedy which apparently is trying to prove that love can happen between two people with absolutely nothing in common; it is quite diluted dramatically and not really striving for strong comicity, and resents being repeatedly disrupted by mediocre songs.

Rating: 37