A LOVING WIFE

If you remember Mrs. Beneker (1968), she was kind of updated Mrs. Bridge with the appealing helplessness of every forty year old underachiever. Quite like Molly Gilbert here, even though she's always worked and had to be a little more loving than anyone else--to her husband Mike, a scientist, and son David, who no longer needs her. Now quite unexpectedly she swings into the saftig pleasures of an affair which contrast sharply with her habit-formed-and-dulled marriage. At first she's guiltily more attentive to Mike after her initially hesitant, later abandoned, trysts in New York posh hotel rooms; then she starts that dangerous comparison shopping, quarrels with Mike about things they've always taken for granted, sweeps her conscience under the carpet. ""Wasn't it strange...how acceptable everything seemed when you yourself did it?"" For the first time in years she confides in her mother who tells her ""You're not exactly Anna Karenina""...And as for Mike, he doesn't understand her at all--""It must be involutional."" Finally disqualifying herself with Robert, leaving Mike, she heads for Rome and the not only lonely but utterly lost life of the unattached woman...Of its kind, and how many are there, a very stylish, fetching entertainment filled with recognitions and afterthoughts for just about any woman of that uncertain age.