A couple of years before Michael Ontkean made the groundbreaking "Making Love," he co-starred in "Willie and Phil," about another romantic triangle puzzlement.
What the Willie, Phil and Jeannette characters don't really come to terms with is the potential for a nurturing, satisfying, mutual triangle. While Willie's and Jeannette's, and Phil's and Jeannette's liaison is richly explored, Willie's and Phil's remains dutifully platonic and unconsumated.
The reason for the latter points to the kind of social convention all three are obviously trying to surmount. Yet their exploration remains far more routine than any of them might like to think.
Thirty five years later, as the content of unions and marriages are in the process of redefining, "Willie and Phil"--timely for the 80s--now looks quite conventional and dated.
Willie and Phil's final roll on the beach, wrestling and hitting on one another now looks like a playful prelude to a passionate embrace. But no such luck. The script squanders any such possibility, and the film ends on the kind of ordinary note acceptable to 80s standards, without breaking any new revelational ground.
What the Willie, Phil and Jeannette characters don't really come to terms with is the potential for a nurturing, satisfying, mutual triangle. While Willie's and Jeannette's, and Phil's and Jeannette's liaison is richly explored, Willie's and Phil's remains dutifully platonic and unconsumated.
The reason for the latter points to the kind of social convention all three are obviously trying to surmount. Yet their exploration remains far more routine than any of them might like to think.
Thirty five years later, as the content of unions and marriages are in the process of redefining, "Willie and Phil"--timely for the 80s--now looks quite conventional and dated.
Willie and Phil's final roll on the beach, wrestling and hitting on one another now looks like a playful prelude to a passionate embrace. But no such luck. The script squanders any such possibility, and the film ends on the kind of ordinary note acceptable to 80s standards, without breaking any new revelational ground.