Appraisal: Structured like a melodrama, but with an emotional distancing characteristic of a comedy, this film has a very original feel to it, which would become a trademark of its writer/director. Also, the film has a unifying theme, which is the contractual aspects of human relations. The screenplay smartly inserts the theme into the story, through a father that wants his daughter to go to college, and needs to negotiate it with her. The other subplots relate to this main theme in subtler ways: the ex-convict can be thought of as someone who has broken the "social contract" and wants to be reinserted in it; the fear of nuclear holocaust may be viewed as a limit situation where the very foundations of civilization, and thus the "global contract", are under threat. Even though it deals with complex notions, they are always subordinated to the flow of the story, and never disrupt it.
Rating: 61
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