'My Brothers Wife' is another somewhat deeper cut into the filmography of Doris Wishman, and I feel we've once again hit the snag of Doris making a film where the premise would have made a great 20-30 minute short film, but instead we have a 71 minute long feature that stretches the very basic core concept WELL beyond any kind of meaningful end product.

The plot? Follows two brothers 'Frankie' and 'Bob', Bob is married to 'Mary' a 23 year old woman who feels neglected in her marriage, and isolated from the rest of the world. When Bobs younger brother Frankie arrives on the scene, looking to stay for a few nights while on the way to somewhere else. He falls HARD for Mary, and after trying to initiate a 'moment' with Mary, he's rejected…But that then sows seeds in Marys mind about her feelings towards Bob and a surge of awakening passions for Frankie.

The twist? Frankie already has a couple of other relationships going, and he's been planning to give his 'main squeeze' 2 grand as part of a planned elopement. The problem? Mary reciprocates feelings for Frankie, and the pair plan to elope to Mexico, and get married themselves. With Mary telling Frankie that she has 2 grand in savings for them to do it. Leaving Frankie in the position of whether to cut his current relationship loose and run off with Mary, or whether to essentially rob Mary and Bob and flee to Mexico with his partner.

That plot sounds complicated, but in practice it really isnt…What this film is realistically is 25-35 minutes of plotting, intercut with 25-35 minutes of extended nudie sequences, softcore grinding, and our characters using their internal monologues to blatently recap the plot of the film we've just sat through. Much liked 'Indecent Desires' Theres a good core plot here, that gets violently lost in thick THICK dollops of padding and overexplanation.

Because of this, the scripts kind of unremarkable, the story is engaging and interesting, but the pacing really bogs it down, the tone is consistent, but really limited in what it wants to ACTUALLY do with the scenarios it puts the characters in.

The characters themselves are shown to have complexity. But really its only Mary who has any degree of serious character reflection or development, as Bob basically dissapears from the picture for the majority of the runtime, and Frankie gets a tiny bit of development up front, and then nothing really until the final 2-3 minutes.

All of this comes together to form a script that, had it been properly edited and truncated, could have probably been quite an engaging piece. But as it stands, feels bogged down, meandering and just kind of dull in places.

The direction and cine are pretty much on the level. Doris here isnt really doing anything to push her style of known tropes in new directions, it largely feels kind of like She's on autopilot for this one. Theres some interesting sequence ideas. But I dont feel like she's really pushing herself.

Same goes for the cine, theres some nice compositions here and there, but a lot of the sequence building is fairly bland for Wishmans repertoire. And while it isnt quite as rushed and laiden with errors as some of Wishmans films. It did have a few wobbly shots, some iffy compositions and some of the editing was a bit rough around the edges in terms of timing the cuts and b-roll usage.

The performances are also a bit of a mixed bag. June Roberts may get the meatiest chunk of the script, but her performance here is a bit lacklustre in my opinion. Shes flat, a bit monotone and her physical presence lands with a thud more often than not. A great model, and when she's posing for static shots in this film, she looks great. But a weak performance.

By contrast Sam Stewart as Frankie has the opposite problem, he has a lot of energy and a good physical presence. But he doesnt really get a lot to do script wise, so all that energy and physicality gets restricted to very limited uses…which is a real shame as I feel in a more campier production, he might have really found his feet. Bob Oran as 'Bob' is left totally out in the cold. He has a handful of scenes in the movie and he's actually not half bad when he does appear, playing an out of touch older brother/husband figure who doesnt realise quite what he's losing by being gruff…and he barely gets any screen time, despite really nailing the brief. its a real shame.

And, for the record, yes this was shot in Doris Wishmans apartment, and yes they do use library soundtrack scores for the entire movies run…and this time around they dont really match the energy of the film, so it all feels a bit mismatched, out of place and 'what we had lying around in terms of vibes…

All in all, this isnt the worst Doris Wishman film. But it is FAR from being a good one…and I dont even think i'd say it was 'Middle of the road'. This is an overly long, and technically questionable production with good bones that are overstretched and some good moments that would look great on a sizzle reel, but do little when placed in their original context. Not one i'd recommend to people looking to get into Wishmans works. Not one i'll likely rush to watch again. It 'okay'…and thats kind of the problem.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/my-brothers-wife/