ugeh37 ...now I wish it had remained that way.WARNING: If you stumble upon this movie while surfing TV, keep surfing!This isn't even a good one time watch. It's the most boring, senseless piece of trash I've ever watched. I can't believe someone made this move. I can't believe Paul Newman signed on to play in this movie. I can't believe it was ever released.This is a bad, bad, bad, movie.

Edgar Soberon Torchia When Robert Altman's relations with 20th Century-Fox were increasingly worsening, he made "Quintet" and "HealtH", sold his production company Lion's Gate, and started shooting Jules Feiffer's script of "Popeye" for Disney and Paramount, a move that in a way signaled a rupture with his previous cinema, centered on the survey of American institutions and film genres. "Quintet" is a cryptic, enigmatic science-fiction drama that takes place in a decimated, permanently cold world. A hunter (Paul Newman) and his pregnant wife (Brigitte Fossey) arrive to the only community of human survivors. The woman is killed —eliminating the possibility of new life— and the hunter participates in a game called quintet, associated (as it has been said somewhere else) with five stages of life: the pain of birth, the strain of maturation, the guilt of existence, the terror of aging, and the finality of death. Altman himself invented the game (which I never understood, to tell the truth, but I could not care less), and the player that loses must die in real life, as the hunter, who has to fight for his life. Photographed by Jean Boffety with a permanent filter that diffuses the corners of the frame, and shot almost entirely inside the abandoned installations of Expo 67 in Montréal (except for the opening and ending, photographed in frozen exteriors), duplicating the feeling of loss and ruin, while the wardrobe adds the sensation of timelessness and worldliness, "Quintet" is a nihilistic vision of the world that some see as the third film of a surrealist trilogy, also conformed by Altman's "Images" and "3 Women". Besides American Newman and French Fossey, the international cast includes Spaniard Fernando Rey, Italian Vittorio Gassmann, Swedish Bibi Andersson, and Danish Nina Van Pallandt. An attractive cinematic experience, it is science fiction "a la Altman", who was not precisely a master of all genres, but a filmmaker who liked to revise them and come out with something else, usually interesting.

iumma I came across this movie by pure chance while browsing through the Netflix streaming menu. I am sorry I did. This film is most definitely one of the worst pieces of trash I have ever encountered. I counted the minutes till it was over. I am a big movie fan, and an even bigger fan of sci-fi, and I can tell you I have seen many, MANY, movies. But this movie, was just, well GOD awful. Talk about calling a movie in?? Newman was on auto-pilot the whole movie, with this constipated look on his face as he spent a good 50-60% of the his screen time simply walking around one of the most uninspired set designs I have ever seen. The fact that this movie has close to a five star ranking at this point is laughable. Why, because it was directed by and stars someone famous? You take Altman and Newman's names of the marquee and guaranteed the reviews will reflect the true quality of the movie. People on IMDb so clearly get blinded by big names. Meanwhile, IMO, having big talent crank out such a bad product makes a bad film even that much worse (vs your average B-movie with no plot and a bunch of no-names). Believe me, there is nothing to be learned here about human nature as some of the other reviews may have you believe. Except maybe that Hollywood will green light just about anything with big names attached to it. Anyway, I am not even gonna spend a minute more talking or thinking about this thing. Consider yourself warned....

Gooper Fortunately, all films aren't for everybody. 'Quintet' is only for a few.I saw this picture twice when it first came out, and I was practically the only one in the theatre. Why? Because it is an exploration into existential possibilities, and when you're in such territory, it's not the type of film where everything is explained, which is what audiences want these days.The problem is, existentialism (in the Sartre sense) is way out of style, if anyone even still knows what that is anymore. Today everybody wants to be cool, so 'Quintet', which is a quiet study of a very controlled situation, probably makes people squirm, and so they can just say, 'what was THAT all about??' 'Quintet' isn't cool (even though the premise is freezing to death), and it just hasn't got the appeal that even supposedly broad-minded film buffs might consider worthwhile.What I don't understand is that, if people can praise, say, Bergman for 'The Seventh Seal', why would they not give 'Quintet' a bit of consideration? Altman was plainly shooting for somewhat of a Bergmaneque question, only on a less intellectual plane: what the hell do humans do when there are fewer and fewer options available for survival? Answer: they go on anyway.'Quintet' is what it is. If nothing else, it is a fine example of adventurous film-making, pushing the limits, in the period right before the blockbuster syndrome took over, once and for all.