Writer-director Paul Mazursky must be a manic-depressive. He enjoys setting up farcial situations and then underlining the laughs with either seriousness or a sense of melancholy. When Bob (Robert Culp) returns home to find wife Carol (Natalie Wood) entertaining a gentlemen in their bedroom, he's outraged--forgetting that he himself just disclosed having an affair not too long back. His juvenile outburst is hilarious, but when the two men meet and share a drink, it's Mazursky who brings the viewer back to Earth with a bit of poignancy. I like this combination, although it's likely to throw some viewers off track. There's a lot going in this film: improvisation, long takes, a surrealistic ending. But I thought it really worked, and Dyan Cannon is just amazing as square friend Alice who can't escape her repressed background. Natalie Wood is less interesting: she's at her most beautiful here, but there's a plastic quality about her work that she can't seem to shake (perhaps she was still stuck in her star-vehicle mode, being overtly 'nutty', and this clashes with the more subtle work of her co-stars). Overall, though, a near-gem. *** from ****