Director John Huston's sombre, ultra-gloomy, but well-acted piece about a British ex-consul in Mexico who cannot live with or without the wife who has had an affair with his half-brother. Albert Finney's highly-mannered performance as the permanently stoned-into-oblivion diplomat takes a while to get attuned to, but Huston extracts the best performance from Jacqueline Bisset in quite a while as the wife. James Villiers contributes an amusing few minutes as an 'Englishman abroad' who almost runs over a Finney finally felled by alcohol. The tragic ending is rather too contrived to compel total belief, and emotionally the film remains at a distance.


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