Though seemingly complex--with puzzling relationships and flights into fantasy --John Frankenheimer's Impossible Object actually deals with one very simple theme: The search for love, life's object, can be comic and tragic, triumphant and pathetic, or all of these at once. Starring Alan Bates and Dominique Sanda, the forthcoming Franco London Film production of Nicholas Mosley's novel details this life quest in the frustrated affair of two enigmatic lovers. Harry, an English writer, devotes himself to his art while shunning interpersonal relationships; his French mistress, Natalie, according to Dominique, "wants everything but does, not know what everything' means. To her, an 'impossible object' is a dream that seems to be out of reach, but once it becomes possible, the dream changes to one as out of reach as the last." Pursuing that elusive vision, Natalie, married to a businessman (Michel Auclir), begins an entangling liaison with Harry, but her demand for deeper commitment temporarily forces them apart. Torn between Natalie and his wife, Elizabeth, the writer retreats into his imagination and weaves a fantasy--the surrealistic scenes shown here-- about everyman's ideal woman, Hippolyta, who searches him out, seduces him and yet makes no emotional demands on him. In the dream sequence, filmed at the Chäteau du Regard, north of Paris, Hippolyta leads Harry through a garden party attended by many alluring but coolly impersonal women, the kind he finds particularly attractive. But strangely enough, even in the fantasy, he can't flee the real world completely, for appearing at the dream party are Natalie, his wife and his son. The complications, both actual and imagined, that arise later in the film are even more bizarre. But we'll leave those to readers curious enough to seek out the Impossible Object for themselves. It strikes us as a wonderful way to escape reality.
