David Ansen

“…. It's a slight idea for a movie, but it has been invested with such a beguiling, eccentric sensibility that style triumphs over the basic thinness of the material.

“Vanessa Redgrave is the tall, painfully shy mystery writer, Dustin Hoffman the short, self-confident Stanton, and a large portion of the film's charm lies in their incongruous but disarming chemistry. Hysterically attached to a husband (Timothy Dalton) who is demanding a divorce so he can marry his secretary, Redgrave's Agatha is a touching study in tormented English respectability, her instinctive diffidence betrayed only by the romantic lunacy that shines from her enormous, inquisitive eyes. Prowling around a public bath . . ., you know she's cooking up trouble--but is it for a novel, or for real?

“…. [T]hese two incognito eccentrics [Agatha and Stanton] circle and court each other with the delicate ardor--and the breathtaking timing--with which the great stars of the '30s conducted their ritualized, epigrammatic courtships.

“…. [T]he mystery is no great shakes. But the movie's mysteriousness casts a spell: it may be fagile, but there's real magic here.

David Ansen
Newsweek, February 19, 1979