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Cactus FlowerRating:
Release Date: 23 April, 2002 Retail Price: $19.94 OUR Price: $17.99 You SAVE: $1.95! Cast: Complete Cast (7 total) |
Cactus Flower Reviews
Adorable 60's comedy...
This is a really sweet little film that is completely and thoroughly 60's. It stars Walter Matthau as a dentist who is dating Goldie Hawn, a young free spirit. He's told her that he's married so he won't have to marry her, but, when he decides he wants to marry her after all, he has to produce a wife. He turns to his faithful nurse, played by Ingrid Bergman (!), who has worked for him for ten years. Hawn's character feels pity for Bergman, and events escalate to the point that the dentist is using one of his patients to play the role of his "wife's" lover.
There's some really witty dialogue in here, and Goldie Hawn, in her first movie role, is irrepressibly adorable. Ingrid Bergman also gives a fabulous performance, once you get over the shock of seeing her in something that isn't Casablanca, looking almost matronly. (But, at age fifty-four, still beautiful.) Walter Matthau also gives a great performance as the sneaky but loveable dentist, and there are a couple of scenes in a dance club that are too great for words.
An Adroit Matthau, a Fresh Goldie and a Fun-Loving Bergman Provide Lift to a Frothy Farce
Aside from the discotheque scenes that epitomize the swinging sixties (especially with everyone dancing to instrumental versions of Monkees hits), I am surprised how well this lightweight farce holds up 37 years later, but indeed it does thanks to the breezy execution of its deception-based plot and the sharp interplay of the three leads. Directed by the redoubtable stage-to-screen expert Gene Saks, this 1969 comedy is about Julian Winston, a successful Manhattan dentist and confirmed bachelor, who pretends to be married in order to avoid long-term commitment with his young girlfriend of a year, Toni. In response to Toni's half-hearted suicide attempt, Julian agrees to marry her, but Toni first insists on meeting his wife to alleviate her conscience. Enter Julian's devoted nurse Stephanie to play the wife, and the inevitable complications ensue with white lies growing into major whoppers that lead to presumed couplings and de-couplings.
As Julian, a relaxed Walter Matthau dexterously plays the deceptive dentist in his typically sardonic manner, but he lets his two female co-stars walk off with the picture. In her big screen debut, a pixyish 24-year old Goldie Hawn is still retaining her giggly "Laugh-In" persona but provides unexpected savvy and depth as Toni. She and Matthau have great, unforced chemistry in their scenes together. Screen legend Ingrid Bergman, still serenely regal at 54, is obviously having a ball playing Stephanie, initially starchy and quick-witted but blossoming into a liberated spirit as the story evolves. I particularly like how casual she appears after her overnight romp. There is nice supporting work from Rick Lenz as Toni's bohemian neighbor Igor and Jack Weston as Julian's smarmy actor buddy Harvey. Billy Wilder's longtime collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond, provides the sparkling screenplay and opens up the story beyond its stage-bound origins for Saks, who is not the most cinematic of directors. Other than a couple of trailers, there are no significant extras with the DVD.
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