The Man I Love

At an after-hours session in a New York jazz club, resident singer Lupino joins in a heartfelt rendition of 'The Man I Love'. Homesick after an unhappy affair, she decides to visit her family in California: a married sister (King) and two younger siblings (Vickers, Douglas). All of them, not to mention the young married couple across the hall (Moran, McGuire), are either in or heading for trouble, mostly emotional, and much of it traceable to a lecherous night-club owner (Alda). Impulsively, driven by an awareness of her own bleak isolation, Lupino tries to help: with some success, but in the process getting snared in Alda's greasy clutches, while simultaneously grasping at the mirage of happiness with a former jazz pianist (Bennett) running away from an unhappy marriage and a burned-out talent. The dialogue is a mite pretentious at times, and the plot comes perilously close to soap at the end. But the performances are excellent, and Walsh's sympathetic direction, wonderfully flexible in negotiating the pin-ball effect as characters and problems interact, gives the whole thing the touching, kaleidoscopic flavour of a prototype Alan Rudolph movie.