Freudian Geometry

By JAY COCKS

X Y & ZEE

Directed by BRIAN G. MUTTON Screenplay by EDNA O'BRIEN

Talk about your bad marriages. Robert (Michael Caine) is a successful London architect wedded--or perhaps welded--to an aging spitfire named Zee (Elizabeth Taylor). Zee has a shape like a brioche and an armor-piercing tongue she uses to lash Robert into line. Robert loves it. He flaunts his casual affairs so that she can drown him in venom. Hatred, in fact, is the single sign of life in their relationship.

Robert's extramarital indulgences remain cursory until he spots Stella (Susannah York) across a crowded room. A friend (Margaret Leighton, in a see-through dress you'd rather not) makes the introductions, and Robert makes the pass. Stella, interested but uncertain, takes a rain check. Zee watches the whole thing blooming but dismisses Stella as "a soulful slob." Imagine her surprise when Robert not only takes Stella as his mistress but also starts to take Stella seriously.

He totes Stella off on one of those lyric holidays by a deserted strand that have been a staple of English films since Room at the Top. This obviously calls for serious measures from Zee. Not even a ritual slitting of her wrists in the bathtub has any appreciable effect. With a gut instinct for elementary Freudian geometry (so thoughtfully supplied by Scenarist Edna O'Brien) Zee sets out to bed Stella herself and play out the triangle of X Y & Zee to its conclusion.

Talk about your bad movies. Miss York mopes about trying to look stoic. Caine carries on with a variety of bleats, sneers and snivels. X Y & Zee, however, is mostly a vehicle for Miss Taylor, who gets still another chance to do the bitch-Earth Mother act seen previously in Boom and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She can be a good actress and is still a beautiful woman; it is a sorrowful thing to watch her camp it up. O'Brien and Director Brian G. Hutton (Where Eagles Dare} toss dialogue and bits of business her way like zookeepers throwing fish to a performing seal.

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