Such a frustrating disappointment

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This movie is simply about the sanctity of marriage although the script and direction make it hard to follow, especially with the excessive religious overtones, flashbacks and side stories. A cheating wife married to a doctor has an affair with another doctor. After about a year into their affair, they decide to leave their spouses for each other. Before the wife can tell her husband she's leaving him, he has an accident and dies. The wife shows no emotion over the event although confused about what she wants to do next. The husband's body disappears and it becomes increasingly evident that he's alive. The wife is suspicious, confused, worried....almost going through the whole spectrum of emotions throughout the movie. Realizing her husband is in fact alive or somehow miraculously risen from the dead, she is confronted by him. She continues her affair while seemingly looking for answers as does her husband who has several serious physical reactions to his wife's thoughts, words and interaction with her lover. Finally after completing a promise she made during an overly religious vision she had at the start of her affair with the doctor, her husband is miraculously healed and she realizes that she truly loves her husband and no longer wants to leave him. I rated this low simply because the script and director made it so difficult to follow the story and see it for what it was.

In Roeg's "Don't Look Now", non-believer Sutherland pays the price by getting chopped up, and in this movie former-believer-but-now-non-believer Russell is "shown the way" by God and has her faith in God restored. She "sees the light", so-to-speak. It's a safe bet that Roeg doesn't think much of atheists: "Convert 'em or kill 'em" must be his credo, and also the message in these two films."C.H." is mysterious and quite ambiguous for quite a while, but then, unfortunately, more and more of the mysteriousness makes place for hardcore religious nonsense and the standard Christian stuff regarding the Virgin Mary. The message of the film is crystal-clear: God intervenes in Russell's life by saving her marriage and restoring her faith. Whether this wonderful God also saved Harmon is less certain; after all, the all-powerful Lord decided to kill him in the first place, and so bringing him back to life isn't exactly something that you can call an act of saving. (If you break a man's bicycle on purpose and then repair it, don't expect him to say thanks.) I at first thought that Russell was only imagining Harmon to still be alive (having perhaps stolen the corpse herself or imagined it being stolen), but once Talia Shire (the nun) tells Patton (the priest) in a confession booth that she has been having religious dreams about Russell for a long time, it then became clear that Roeg was going for a strictly by-the-numbers religious message, and not an ambiguous one free for interpretation.Roeg is no intellectual. I assume that the chances are very slim indeed that Roeg ever did or will ever make a film in which a God-fearing believer becomes a non-believer. That much is certain.I liked the thing Patton said to Russell at one point, and its obvious implications: he told her that Satan doesn't have the power over life and death, but that only God has it. Translation/Conclusion: Satan cannot do real evil, only God can. Now what kind of a God are they all worshiping then? They should pray that Satan takes over the Heavens and somehow gets rid of this God, which would mean that God wouldn't have the power anymore to cause all the damage that he does – using this logic. But then we'd have over-population. It's a strange dilemma...Okay, so I am poking a bit of fun at the film's religious aspects and all the illogic and absurdity that they tag along with them, but the film is still solid. It would have been better had it not sought to hide like a coward in the religious corner, using tired old clichés like frantic nuns, philosophical priests, and that mighty thunder in the sky that seems to be an oft-employed method by God of relaying messages to his fearful flock.

Could this be by the same director as Don't Look Now or Bad Timing? Poorlyacted, clunkily edited. You only have to compare the various accident scenes in this with similar ones in Don't Look Now to see how much Roeg has lost histouch.Even the generally reliable Teresa Russell (looking a bit chunky these days, I'm afraid to report) cannot save this one. The plot is pure pseudo-religious hokum, the acting is wooden and Roeg's attempts at his trademark dislocation of time are pitiful.Avoid this one like the plague.

This movie almost plays better in you mind, in retrospect. It tackles several complex themes, which it then twists and entwines. The results, while not always successfully resolved, none the less provide something rare today; Food for thought. Among other things, this film deals with, adultery, faith, and redemption. Beautifully filmed, we are introduced to a wife of a doctor, whose flirtations are actually killing her husband. The wife is a non believer, yet she somehow finds herself involved in something that she cannot explain. She is both a unwitting pawn, in a miraculous event, that tests the faith of a minister and a Nun, and challenges her to examine her own disillusion with her marriage and her husband. She comes to realize that her outside affair with a handsome young man, directly affects the health of her husband, (who comes back from the dead.!) she is confused. And then there are those visions of the virgin Mary....Not your usual shoot em up..... oddly paced, yet affecting.