Review of Moment to Moment

Alec Coppel and John Lee Mahin concocted this screenplay from Coppel's short story "Laughs With a Stranger" about the lonely wife of an American psychiatrist in Cannes who takes an immediate liking to a sailor on shore leave; their friendship gets heated while hubby is away, but tragedy strikes after the sailor feels slighted and remembers the woman has a loaded gun in the house. Oddly-coiffed Jean Seberg was an excellent choice to play this guilty spouse, keeping a surprisingly cool head throughout the whirlpool of melodrama developing around her. Honor Blackman is lively as a vulnerable man-chaser, but Grégoire Aslan flounders with the nearly-unplayable role of a suspicious French inspector who pops in and out of the proceedings like a sneaky jack-in-the-box (is this the only case he's working on?). Some of the far-fetched circumstances are indeed fun, and yet when the writers attempt to lend credibility to the story's details via the dialogue, it gets all balled up. A plot-thread involving amnesia strikes one as a tired movie gimmick (one that ranks right up there with sleepwalking); however, the film does improve as it goes along, and it plays the amnesia-card to rather amusing effect. Henry Mancini's lovely score is a plus, and the intermittent location footage and cinematography are attractive--though both are nearly ruined by the compromise of obvious sets and poor back-projection. **1/2 from ****