This is an astonishing documentary that will wring your heart while it bends your mind

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Womanizing Dr. Julian Winston (Walter Matthau) has told his new girlfriend, Toni (Goldie Hawn) that he is married, to prevent the relationship from getting serious. He decides he does want to marry Toni, and tells her that he will get a divorce, but she insists on meeting his wife first. He persuades his longtime nurse Stephanie (Ingrid Bergman) to pretend to be his wife. Stephanie and Toni meet, but things don't turn out just the way Julian had expected.This romantic comedy is pure fun, with great lines and perfect delivery from the two veteran actors. Goldie Hawn's Oscar winning debut performance is a true delight. The sets and costumes looked wonderful, and the supporting cast of Jack Weston, Rick Lenz, Vito Scotti, and Irene Hervey added greatly to the overall experience. This is a film well worth watching.

Cactus Flower finds Walter Matthau as successful Park Avenue dentist and part time roue who loves chasing the young women. One has to remember this was 1969 the height of the era of free love and many a middle aged man was going into a second bout of puberty. With Matthau though he never left the first one.If people get too interested in a permanent relationship he's invented a fictional wife and 3 kids who just won't let him go. Right now he's seeing Goldie Hawn who is your typical 60s product who works in a record store back when people bought those vinyl 45s and long playing albums. But right in his own office there's loyal and efficient Ingrid Bergman who is his dental assistant. One of those people who just blend into the wallpaper, you just assume their presence. My biggest problem with Cactus Flower is that Bergman seeing what a complete rat Matthau is in his personal life why she wants him is beyond me. But the heart always has its own reasons.In any event when Hawn starts pressing him Matthau has Bergman pretend to be his wife. After that everyone starts making assumptions about everyone else.This was Ingrid Bergman's first film in Hollywood since the notorious scandal with Roberto Rosellini back in 1949. She takes over from fellow movie icon Lauren Bacall who did the Broadway play from 1965 to 1968 with Barry Nelson and Brenda Vaccaro. She turns out to have quite the flair for comedy which was rarely used.Matthau is Matthau. Imagine Whiplash Willie Gingrich in a white dental outfit and you have Walter's character.The real surprise here is Goldie Hawn who certainly did have a flair for comedy as shown by her time on Rowan&Martin's Laugh-In during that period. Her stint there won her the part of the record store clerk and she got an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and the start of a successful big screen career.The acting is great of course. For me I think the story would have worked better if Matthau got some comeuppance. He sure didn't deserve Ingrid and Ingrid deserved better.

A feather weight sitcom stretched out into a feature film. Walter Matthau is a womanizing dentist who throws his conquests off by claiming to be married. When he finds himself smitten with kooky Goldie Hawn, he recruits his spinsterish nurse (Ingrid Bergman) to play his "wife," in order to convince Hawn he's getting a divorce. Mayhem ensues. There's lots of wisecracks in what is essentially a filmed play (Abe Burrows wrote the play, I.A.L. Diamond did the screenplay). Most of the funniest lines come from Jack Weston, as one of Matthau's less savory patients. Bergman is fun and it's great to see her playing in a comedy. Matthau is Matthau and Hawn (who won an Oscar) brightens up a story that could have been pretty dull stuff. Quincy Jones did the score, but listen for a number of songs from other Columbia products (TO SIR WITH LOVE; THE MONKEES) playing in the discotheque scenes. Directed by Gene Saks.

Florigraphists, fluent in the "language of flowers", revealing a symbolic, underlying meaning to sending or receiving floral arrangements, describe cactus flower as a symbol of lust (in Japan), as well as courtship and romance (among Native Americans). All three and many other modest or excessive feelings, relationships, experiences... are nicely wrapped up in a comedy suggesting same symbolism in its title.1969 film "Cactus Flower", directed by Gene Saks (who has already introduced us, a year earlier, to another stage play classic adapted for the big screen, Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple") is a feel-good movie--based on Abe Burrows' Broadway stage adaptation of its witty French original, Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pieerre Grédy's play "Fleur de cactus"--scripted by a legendary comedic writer I.A.L. Diamond (who is, among his other memorable works, credited with the screenplay for an all-time favourite comedy "Some Like It Hot" (1959)), with impish dentist Walter Matthau, accompanied by his reputable nurse-receptionist Ingrid Bergman, coming across as likable and funny leads, further supported by young and sweet Goldie Hawn, in her Oscar awarded depiction of a-cute-dumb-blond stereotype.Bergman's Stephanie Dickinson, for all her decency and selflessness, is a character who is easy to identify with and root for in her initially seemingly unconscious pursuit of her apparently long suppressed, quietly emerging affection for Matthau's Dr. Julian Winston, a rogue we cannot hate because he behaves like a boy from Mark Twain's novel, or Dennis the menace who has grown up and old, but never out of his mischievous ways. In his no-strings-attached wished for relationship with Hawn's sparkling Toni Simmons, he pretends to be married. However, this new "fact" tickles well meant youngster's curiosity, so, surely free spirited, but not unscrupulous as eventual household breaker, Toni, tormented by many unanswered questions becomes--as seen in the introductory scene--suicidal, and... what was meant to be a small "preventive" lie asks for more lies, ultimately spiraling out of control.Interaction between the three, further helped with an additional "accomplice", Winston-like lovable cad Harvey Greenfield, played by Jack Weston, produces some truly hilarious and--specially when the most believable miss Dickinson is involved--touchy moments for a wide-range audience to enjoy. "Cactus Flower" easily stands the test of time and even improves with each repeated viewing.Current year (2011) production "Just Go with It", a loose remake of the 1969 original, provides a solid, yet, somewhat inferior entertainment when compared to its predecessor.