One of Sidney Lumet’s least-remembered movies (made between Serpico and Murder on the Orient Express), Lovin’ Molly might be among his most gently likeable and delight-infused, entirely rooted in small-scale lives and expectations but quietly radical in its premise. The opening minutes of the first section, set in 1925, disorient us as to whether Blythe Danner’s Molly is in love with Beau Bridges’ Johnny or Anthony Perkins’ Gideon, and about what the two men, who are also best friends, might think of the competition; over subsequent decades, Molly has a child (neither of which survives the war) with each of them, while marrying a third man (a decision she can’t explain even to herself). By the time of the second section, set in 1945, Gideon has become a rich landowner, aridly married to Sarah (Susan Sarandon), who pointedly is mostly absent from the film, even as we hear of how she works to ruin Molly’s reputation; the third section, in 1964, visits them near the end of their lives. The film always leaves open the possibility (nudged ahead in hindsight by the subsequent resonances surrounding Perkins, and by the involvement of Brokeback Mountain’s Larry McMurtry) that the most significant love is that between the two men, an impression formed early on by the very physical nature of their competitiveness (intertwined with a certain sexual naivete) and reasserted near the end, when they’re still playing silly jokes on one another, still hanging out together while musing about moving in with Molly. Certain aspects of the film, such as the device of allocating the voice over and primary perspective of each section to a different character, count for less than might be expected, given the largely unvarying tone; it’s certainly a small film in all respects. But along with works like The Appointment and Last of the Mobile Hot-Shots, it also testifies to Lumet’s under-appreciated eccentric streak.
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