Cinema: A Man, a Woman and Some Dogs

Five foreign films consider love, with mixed results

By their films shall ye know them. Looking at any national cinema, a viewer inevitably sketches a personality profile of that country: its mood and tempo, its political priorities, its sense of humor (if any) and, above all, its attitudes toward sex and romance. Americans, to judge from the movies they make and attend, are fast, rough, raunchy lovers -- backseat studs and born- to-thrill prom queens. Canadians cannot decide whether to imitate American energy or British reserve. Germans are dogmatic and ironic by turns; and the men snore in bed, but only, as one of them explains, "to protect their...

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