John & Mary

Screen legends Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow light up the screen in this engaging and subtle film directed by Peter Yates.

Based on the novel by Mervyn Jones, John And Mary stars Hoffman as a furniture designer and Farrow as an art gallery assistant who meet in an upscale New York singles bar and go home together. The next day, they individually wander around the city, wondering what their night together might have meant – if anything. Even though both carry over-the-limit baggage from unsuccessful earlier affairs, and both are stocked with enough hang-ups to fill volumes of psychological textbooks, thereÂ's still a chance that theyÂ'll wind up together at least one more time – and if nothing else, learn each other's names for the first time!

A perceptive analysis of a one night stand, John and Mary arrived with the tagline, "It's not your mother's love story." And so it isn't. With hindsight, though, this New York-set, European-style romance seems more quaint than revolutionary. John (Dustin Hoffman) meets Mary (Mia Farrow) at a bar where they bond over Jean-Luc Godard. Turns out she isn't a fan, but the ice has been broken, and a connection is made. The timeline proceeds to shift from the night they met, the day after their tryst, and their previous relationships (his with a flighty model, hers with a married politician). Aside from quotable lines, like "Cinema verité is just an excuse to follow a little girl into the ladies room," John Mortimer's script uses voiceover to convey the couple’s inner thoughts. With his preppy outfits, Hoffman looks much like his post-collegiate character in The Graduate, while Farrow, with her baby-doll dresses, looks much like her hip housewife in Rosemary's Baby, though their performances here are quite different. Featuring a spare soundtrack by Quincy Jones and direction by the versatile, if inconsistent Peter Yates (Bullitt), John and Mary is an underrated look at love among young singles torn between convention and desire. The sexual politics may seem dated, but the chemistry between Hoffman's fastidious John and Farrow's flippant Mary is as appealing as it is unlikely (TIME magazine dubbed them "The Moonchild and the Fifth Beatle"). With Olympia Dukakis as John's mother and Tyne Daly as Mary's roommate. --Kathleen C. Fennessy