Nic Roeg's latest venture into the realms of sexual obsession is set against a backdrop of gun-fighting on the streets of 1989 Bucharest. It's an ensemble piece focusing on an annual reunion dinner in the house of the mysterious Dr. Daniel Pavenic (Gambon). And as the guests - Buscan (Malahide), Dalakis (Ion Caramitru), and Vernescu (Nickolas Grace) - gather, the rapidly escalating civil war engulfs the Romanian capital.
Once cosseted in Pavenic's home, the men are intrigued to learn of the lifelong affair between their host and his beautiful, yet defiant housekeeper Anna Prospescu (Braga). The doctor unravels, in flashback, his infatuation and the appalling lengths he's gone to have her reciprocate his attentions.
Pavenic's narrative provides the focus, but also serves to get the confessional mood going, and his slowly unravelling tragedy is interrupted when other guests air their own dirty laundry.
Juicy exposs being the order of the day, there are inevitably, as sexual secrets are laid bare, many moments that, for the audience, veer close to embarrassing. But with the masterly Gambon, sultry Braga and weasely Grace stoically soldiering on in the face of a sometimes hammy script, such chortles are easily suppressed.
Sadly, the innovative Roeg, stuck with a mainly housebound location, is given little chance to enhance an erratic but entertaining production with any of his usual camera trickery. An overtly stagey entry into the Roeg canon, this has enough of his weird visions and dark peccadillos to satisfy the dedicated, but is unlikely to convert the sceptical.