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Very well executed

Too much of everything

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Toni Simmons (Goldie Hawn) tries to commit suicide by gas stove, after getting stood up, only to be rescued by writer neighbor Igor Sullivan. She's a 21-year-old record shop girl desperately in love with Dr. Julian Winston (Walter Matthau). What started out as a fling with the married dentist with three kids has become a year long love affair. Julian agrees to get a divorce and marry Toni. In reality, he's a commitment-phobic playboy who created a fake marriage with kids to avoid every single women pushing to get married. Now he's finally ready for marriage but he has to fix the lie. He recruits his cold and efficient assistant Stephanie Dickinson (Ingrid Bergman) to play his wife. Despite working together for many years, all he knows about her is her prickly cactus on her desk. After Stephanie's talk to Toni about the divorce, Toni becomes convinced that Stephanie still loves Julian. Julian tells Toni that Stephanie already has a new boyfriend and recruits his weasel friend Harvey Greenfield (Jack Weston) to play the part. It only gets more complicated from there.Goldie Hawn has a fun energy. Ingrid Bergman has a Scandinavian coldness with a hot interior. It's a little harder to believe Walter Matthau as a playboy but he is able to keep the character as a good guy. It fits the times. The chemistry between the three stars is terrific. The story is a solid rom-com. There isn't any surprising twist but that's perfectly fine. The final pairings are never in doubt. This is a great crossing between two iconic goddesses, one starting her journey and one nearing the end. The fun material is elevated by the actors.

In Manhattan, the dentist Dr. Julian Winston (Walter Matthau) works with his efficient nurse and secretary Stephanie Dickinson (Ingrid Bergman) and he likes to compare her to a cactus flower since she represses her emotions. On the first anniversary of his relationship with his twenty- one year-old mistress Toni Simmons (Goldie Hawn), he does not visit her since he dates an Austraian steward. Toni believes Julian is married with three children and stayed with his family; therefore she decides to commit suicide with gas. However her next door neighbor, the young aspiring writer Igor Sullivan (Rick Lenz), saves her life. When Julian learns what Toni did, he decides to marry her. However Toni does not want to be a homewrecker and asks to talk to Mrs. Winston to be sure that she wants the divorce. Julian does not want her to know that he is a liar, so he asks Stephanie to pose of Mrs. Winston, in the beginning of lots of confusions and misunderstandings. "Cactus Flower" is a delightful romantic comedy with an outstanding cast. Ingrid Bergman is impressively beautiful for a fifty-four year-old woman, but Goldie Hawn steals the show. The predictable conclusion is perfect for this entertaining romance. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Flor de Cacto" ("Cactus Flower")

Gene Saks' Cactus Flower is an electric little comedy gem, buoyed by great lead performances, unmistakable chemistry amongst its cast, and a genuinely pleasant feeling of not knowing where the material is headed. The film is headlined by Walter Matthau, an amiable and always welcome presence, playing Julian Winston, a dentist living comfortably within his means with a little something on the side. He has been seeing his mistress Toni (Goldie Hawn) for quite sometime. In order to get out of the relationship, Julian lies and tells Toni that he is married with three children. Depressed and out of options, she resorts to a cheap suicide attempt that fails due to her caring neighbor.Upon learning about Toni's suicide attempt, Julian has seemingly no choice other than to get back with her and predicating the relationship off another lie, this one being he plans on divorcing his wife in order to be with her. She can kind of believe that, but requests a dinner-date with his wife, who, of course, Julian doesn't have. He winds up getting his receptionist Stephanie Dickinson (Ingrid Bergman) to play his wife, despite her being very straight- laced and of a no-nonsense type. As one can infer, this web of lies only extends itself, and Julian, along with Stephanie, become entangled in something they can't detach themselves from.This material may sound familiar to some, being that this particular film was just remade into the abysmal comedy Just Go With It, starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. The film was simply not funny, and relied more on humor derived from situations and far- fetched antics rather than the nuances brought forth by its actors. With Saks, a brilliant director of lengthy conversations, behind the camera and I. A. L. Diamond writing, this particular effort becomes a classy and rousing little farce that sticks true to its Broadway roots. Saks more than established his credibility with long takes, depictions of sharp, biting dialog, and uproarious situational comedy with The Odd Couple prior to this picture. Starring Matthau alongside Jack Lemmon, nobody in front or behind the camera seemed to be able to do any wrong. The film was constantly entertaining and always alive, even if some scenes in one particular setting with relatively basic takes lasted an upwards of twenty- five minutes. Here, he brings that same kind of conversational simplicity and fun to this particular project, always finding hilarious things for his three leads to say and to do.Yet it would take a lot of effort to cheapen and soften veteran actors like Matthau, Bergman, and Hawn. The highlight here is Bergman, who proves to any of her naysayers she had at the time about her genre-diversity that she can not only do comedy but perform hilarious deadpan comedy. Consider a scene when Bergman's Stephanie is on a "date" with her "boyfriend" in a bar. Staged by Julian so that Toni can notice the two, Stephanie is clearly turned off by the man she's set up with - a long time customer at the dentist office - and she takes every opportunity she can to subtly insult or belittle the man. "Why not take a sip, dear, it may make me look better to you," he says. "There's not enough wine in the world," she replies.And one cannot forget Hawn, whose performance here scored her an Oscar in 1969. Hawn is her usual lively, perky self, whose character is more than meets the eyes. One can dismiss her as naive and gullible, but the efforts she takes to either identify that Julian is lying to or just to learn information proves her character isn't as stupid as she seems.Cactus Flower gets by on actor-chemistry along with acting talents rather than humor based on strained circumstances. It is total comedy from the 1960's, focusing on sharp dialog and character, rather than cheap jokes and immaturity. Assisted heavily by the wise talents of Saks but made the show it is thanks to its actors, the film is a lively blend of talent from every corner or the grid.Starring: Walter Matthau, Goldie Hawn, and Ingrid Bergman. Directed by: Gene Saks.

The most newsworthy of this preposterous comedy is Goldie Hawn's Oscar coronation (BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS) for her first major role in the showbiz, quite a fluke and what would be more unrealistic is that her daughter Kate Hudson would nearly rehash the path in ALMOST FAMOUS (2000, 8/10). Thanks god this didn't happen. It is a three-way story, so Hawn is arguably a leading player in the game, for contemporary audience, the script is more-or-less the same of Sandler-Aniston's successful potboiler, JUST GO WITH IT (2011), no rating since I have been unable to finish that film in one piece (although I do love Rachel and tempted by Nicole's cameo). Matthau, a single and swinging dentist in New York, asks his reliable nurse (Bergman) to act as his soon-to-be-divorced wife since he is going to marry the ingénue (Hawn) he is besotted with (and vice versa), the only stumbling block is a white lie that he pretends to be a married man in front of Hawn, so out of salving the guilty of being a home-wrecker, Hawn demands to meet Matthau's wife and ascertain her future is in good condition, only by then they will proceed the matrimony. Sounds like a wide-eyed tantrum to make-believe life is still wonderful and she is still a good girl will go to heaven. Actually she is, the only trouble-maker is Matthau himself, it is his weakness of predisposing himself with a harm-cum-responsibility free pass to gain carnal knowledge which comically backfires and he will find out who is the essential significant other for him. The film also heralds Bergman's return to America after her ousting in European land, at the age of 54, she demonstrates what an ageless beauty she is, her metamorphosis from a prim-and- proper old maiden to a liberated pleasure-seeker commandeers the most gratifying empathy and jubilation from the film, also a self-emancipation to her more secular and approachable persona than her usual foreign, distant, icy effigy. Bergman's comic turn offers great pleasure, so is the ever-congenial Matthau, effortlessly makes viewers forgive his character's frailty, and show no malapropos either pairs with Bergman or Hawn, he is not your usual prince-charming, but one just feel no choler nor envies to see him conquer both one-of-a-kind beauties.Shamefully to say this is my first Hawn's film, grandma haven't done anything for more than a decade, she is a paragon of Hollywood blonde ambition, doe-eyed, the-girl-next-door closeness, her star-quality pops out automatically whenever the camera catches her, and director Gene Saks never skimps to give her extra glamour by extending her part out of the dumb-blonde sexy-exploitation (I'm not referring to you, Brooklyn Decker), her interplay with the very kissable Rick Lenz (a shorter young James Stewart doppelganger) bears out she is much of a MAN-nipulator than a dim gold-digger. The ending twist strikes as a niggle for me since why everything "must" get back to the age-wise rightness, the audacious transform of Bergman only blossoms as a gratuitous payoff of years- long unrequited affection, and the suicidal-inclined Hawn can just simply thumb her nose at her lover and get over with it by calling on her next prey, it is a screenwriter's lethargy. Also I'm fully against killing animals for their fur!