STRANGER IN MY BED

US, 1986, 96 minutes, Colour.
Lindsay Wagner, Armand Assante, Allyn Ann McLerie?.
Directed by Larry Elikann.

Stranger In My Bed is a somewhat suggestive title for what is, in fact, a rather serious telemovie about social issues and family. It is based on a true story and concerns a woman who is hit by a car, suffers amnesia and never recovers her memory. She has to get to know, once again, her family and her children. The film is presented in the serious and effective style of the American telemovie.

Lindsay Wagner is both attractive and persuasive in the central role. Armand Assante is her husband. The film is geared towards a wide television audience - but probes well the many problems that arise, given this bizarre situation.

1. Human interest? Audience identifying with characters and situations? The American telemovie style?

2. American backgrounds, family and home, school, hospitals, workplaces?

3. The film as a true story, audience reaction to its credibility, the characters, identification?

4. Lindsay Wagner as Beverley, the introduction to her at home with her husband and children, going out, the suddenness of the accident, her being hurt, the irrevocability of the effect? In hospital? The limits of medical help?

5. The situation, her reaction to the doctor, her not knowing Hank? Her losing all her memory and knowledge before the accident? Her bewilderment? The absence of information? Her awkwardness? Accepting that Hank was her husband? Her reaction in feat against the children? Thinking she would know had she had children? With her mother and father?

6. Her decision to trust Hank and go home? The awkwardness? Audiences sharing her tentativeness? The lists and the cards to help her in what she had to do? Her differing psychological condition? Buying new clothes? Meals? Her not going out, the venture at the party, her meeting the man and finding him attractive, the talk about Paris?

7. Frank and his ability to face the real situation? His hankering for the past? His looking at Beverley as she was? Saying the right things and trying to help her? At home, at work, details of family life? Sexuality and intimacy? The children and the boy's reaction against his mother, wanting his real mother? The daughter and her ability to cope? Ordinary things? Hank taking Bev to the new house? Her meeting the best man at the wedding?

8. The growing exasperation? Bev and her attraction towards the man from the party, going to his yacht, deciding to leave, the effect on her? Rank telling her of her father's death? The funeral? The effect of the death on her?

9. The children and their coping, her absence, the daughter taking advantage of her loss of memory?

10. The reconciliation? The confrontation with Hank and Bev trying to make him understand what he was doing to her? Give and take?

11. The final captions - and that Beverley and Hank had stayed together?

12. An informative look at the experience of amnesia? The psychological and social repercussions? A credible story?