Coming Apart

The considerable talents Rip Torn, Viveca Lindfors and Sally Kirkland are largely squandered in this Manhattan-based film. In this symbolic and erotic drama Manhattan psychiatrist Joe Glazer (Torn) is a psychoanalyst who specializes in female neuroses. Obsessed by his work, he begins filming his sessions, voyeuristically watching the results in his off-hours. He interviews a masochist who can only be sexually aroused with pain (Markle) and is willingly fellated by his sex-starved patient JoAnn (Kirkland). He is also pursued by an uninhibited hippie girl and a transvestite. In his focus to help his patients, Joe fails to realize he is falling into his own world of madness. His sexual encounters are a diversion which prevent him from admitting his own feelings, wants and needs, and his filmmaking activities climax with a record of his own emotional background. Nudity and sexual situations prompted an X rating for this film at the time of the initial release.