Darling

"It should be so easy to be happy," but it proves predictably elusive for aspiring model and actress Diana Scott in this 1965 drama that earned Julie Christie the Academy Award for Best Actress (over Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music). The amoral Diana is not the most sympathetic of characters: no sooner is she plucked off the street for a television interview then she's leaving her "immature" husband for the married TV reporter (Dirk Bogarde), and later dumping him for Miles (Laurence Harvey), a playboy described by one acid-tongued acquaintance as "a man after his own heart." In exploring the emptiness of jet-set life, Darling mined similar territory as Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita and Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura. Thirty-eight years have taken the shock value out of Diana's hedonistic social climbing and bed-hopping, but some of the satirical swipes by director John Schlesinger and screenwriter Frederic Raphael (who also won an Oscar, and went on to script Eyes Wide Shut) still sting, as in the opening credits when a billboard on behalf of an African relief fund is papered over with glamour shots of Diana. It's all so "terribly Chelsea," but the ravishing Christie's vibrant performance keeps this from being merely a '60s relic. Presented in a decent widescreen transfer on an essentially extra-less (beyond the trailer) disc, this is recommended. (D. Liebenson)