The Four Seasons (1981) * * *

 

Directed by:  Alan Alda

Starring:  Alan Alda, Carol Burnett, Len Cariou, Sandy Dennis, Jack Weston, Rita Moreno, Bess Armstrong

Three married couples have been vacationing together during all four seasons for longer than any of them care to remember.    They spend time together, but are they really close?   They drink, they laugh, they tell stories, but there is tension underneath the cheery surface.   Does familiarity indeed breed contempt?  One of the wives tells her husband she would like to go away without the others next time.  You can imagine the gasp when that news is broken to the others.   Who knows?   Maybe everyone else thinks the same way.  

The strength of The Four Seasons which endures even through occasional sitcom situations and dialogue is how the dynamic between the group is tested when Nick (Cariou) tells Jack (Alda) he is leaving his wife one day after celebrating their 21st wedding anniversary in a cabin where everyone convened for the spring vacation.   It is the first time in which the illusion of the group's closeness is tested and then altered forever.   Nick insists he is not leaving Anne (Dennis) for another woman, but when summer comes and the group heads to the Virgin Islands to spend some time on a boat, Nick has the younger Ginny (Armstrong) in tow.   Nick and Ginny loudly do the rumpy-pumpy to the chagrin of the others, who are either appalled at the lack of etiquette or envious that such a spark has gone out of their own marriages.   

Thankfully, Ginny is not seen as a vapid bimbo, but as a woman who understands how her presence has shaken things up within the group.   She loves Nick, and is even willing to endure awkward moments like meeting Anne in-person during a visit to Nick's daughter's college in the fall.  Ginny begins as an outsider, but everyone grows to accept her as part of the new normal.   In a way, Ginny is the mirror the others hold up to look at their own lives.   She is object of either admiration, scorn, or envy; depending on the day.

The other couples, Jack and Kate (Burnett), a successful lawyer and publisher respectively, and Danny (Weston), a hypochondriac dentist who fears death and Claudia (Moreno), who knows how to handle Danny's eccentricities, are more or less happy, but how they view their marriages will soon be tested.  The couples are comfortable with each other, but are they happy?   Jack is forever trying to coerce the others to discuss their emotions and clear the air, but he seems to hold back his own feelings in reserve much to Kate's displeasure.   Danny kvetches with the best of them, but during one critical and touching scene, he confesses to his friends why he worries about everything.    

Not everything is neatly tied up in the end, but we get the feeling these friends will always stay that way.   The actors have great chemistry and Alda's writing and directing are subtle and smart.  Friends and relatives tend to move in and out of people's lives.   Anne intelligently determines that Kate and Claudia haven't been around as much after she and Nick split.   It's as if they won Nick in the divorce and staying friends with Anne would add a level of awkwardness no one is willing to deal with.   The Four Seasons is not simply about lifelong friends, but the discomfort and insecurity that sometimes accompanies an eternal friendship.