As with its subject, romantic relationships, Joan Tewkesbury's Old Boyfriends can be considered in terms of what it is as well as what it could have been. Ultimately, under Tewkesbury's tenderly intricate direction, what it is triumphs, resulting in an idiosyncratic debut feature heretofore largely unavailable for viewing and ripe for rediscovery among fans of American cinema from the 1970s. Tewkesbury is one of the women directors from this transformative era of filmmaking—others include Elaine May, Barbara Loden, and Joan Micklin Silver—who have been widely underrecognized and who are only just recently getting the attention they deserve. Best known for cowriting Robert Altman's 1974 masterpiece Thieves Like Us and writing his 1975 piece de resistance Nashville, Tewkesbury transitioned to directing with Old Boyfriends, with a script by brothers Paul and Leonard Schrader. Before it was Old Boyfriends it was Old Girlfriends. It's Tewkesbury's refined sensibility that comes through and liberates her characters' innate womanhood from the Schraders' acerbic scripting. CONTINUE READING>>