You won't be disappointed!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Jill Clayburgh gives an off-the-wall performance in this 1978 film dealing with a woman who must confront the fact that her husband has walked out on her. After seemingly having the perfectly married life with a precocious daughter, Clayburgh is forced to re-enter life in a time of sexual revolution in America.Michael Murphy is superb as her husband who walks out on her, and there is fine support from Cliff Gorman, the guy who knows the score and Alan Bates, who steals the film as Saul Kaplan, the rebel artist who got his inspiration for expressionism when his mother threw a pickled herring at his father! The film, before the entrance of Bates, depicts men as overly obsessive sex fiends who will go to any length to make a conquest. While the Kaplan figure goes from that description, Clayburgh suddenly becomes an independent woman.Penelope Russianoff, who had a Ph.D in psychology in real life, portrays the therapist that Clayburgh goes to when Murphy walks out. For a non-actress, she is perfect for the part since she is in every sense of meaning, a true therapist.Finding fault with a basically good film that should have been better may be shown by the inconsistencird of the Clayburgh performance. Her Jewish-American attributes at the beginning get a rude awakening when Murphy walks out. Yet, she goes through a period of shock and desire to cling to something only to boldly claim her independence as a woman.The ending of the film is a definite disappointment. Erica (Clayburgh) again proves that as a scorned woman, she hesitates to re-enter life and will, if anything, be subordinate to it.

I did not feel pity for a divorcée who still lived as she did when the wealthy husband was still living at home. Like many people stated, let's see a movie where a woman actually had to struggle to pay rent and feed her kid(s) when the man walked out. I can see why the husband wanted a little more out of life while his wife just flitted about town enjoying herself while he worked hard for his family. His wanting a younger woman who was fun was normal while she was too tired for sex most of the time.The therapist only encouraged depravity with the suggestion her client meet and experience as many men as possible. Casual sex did not seem to work for the divorcée so she hooked up with the artist far too quickly and was ready to give up her life for a man she really did not know. Even though the husband wanted to come back, the soon-to-be ex-wife did not think of her life and how she would become one of her pitiful friends. Instead, she was too infatuated with the sexual attention which was detrimental to her daughter.The ending was bunk. I found it rude for the English artist to blithely tell his girlfriend/whatever to take a cab or something to get that huge painting home. She looked ridiculous walking the streets with it and the guy was gone...gone...gone! IMNSO, she should have taken back her husband. So what if he had an affair. How she behaved afterward was no better with bedding her co-worker and then the artist she knew for maybe an hour. All she was going to get as a single mom was a life of degradation.Feminism was to show women to be strong but to not lose our self-respect by giving ourselves to any man who was interested.

I disliked An Unmarried Woman, starring Jill Clayburgh and Alan Bates. Clayburgh's character gets dumped by her philandering husband, of whom she suspected nothing of the sort. She keeps the gorgeous apartment and seems financially fit;something that seldom happens in real life. While wallowing in her grief and self-pity, on her first try she finds the perfect shrink and then her first date is a dashing, sensitive artist played by the dashing, sensitive Alan Bates. I saw this with another recently-divorced woman and we were rolling our eyes skyward throughout the movie, asking the good Lord for patience.Let's see a movie about a woman without any real marketable skills who gets dumped, with several children to care for, who has to depend on public social services for help? BTW, there's some value in comparing this to the 2005 movie The Upside of Anger, in which another woman, this time played by Joan Allen, gets dumped and, in her case, is left with four teenage daughters. While she hasn't financial woes, the psychological trauma rings far more true than in the self-serving Unmarried Woman.Why did I give it a 6? The outstanding cast and production teams. Consider it a gift.

Briefly, this is one of the few American films I have seen that is remotely a realistic depiction of how basically intelligent, decent, middle-class adults behave in a long-term relationship (in this case a marriage of sixteen years) when they break up. I almost felt as though I were watching a reality show from that era. This is how people behave, without much heroism or great insight into themselves or others; often with a "cluelessness" that defines our humanity more tellingly than our pride would like to hear. (An aside to the previous commenter: I have seen this sort of thing, close-up and personal, and this is pretty much how people act: it reminded me very much of how a couple with whom I was very close broke up, and the aftermath, in the decade before this film was made. And the man had been having an affair for several years before it happened, not just one: the woman had not a clue.) My only complaint is that the story ends far too soon and far too happily. But it is an American film (sigh!), so one most not expect too much: we just "cannot bear very much reality"!