Carnal Knowledge

Description: The film traces the sexual and emotional confusion of two men from their Amherst College days in the fifties through the Kennedy sixties, up to the Vietnam era. Jonathan, a successful tax attorney and Sandy, a physician, personify two extremes of self-delusion and self-aggrandizement: Jonathan makes the mistake of thinking sex is love, and embarks on a lifetime of sexual conquest; Sandy dedicates himself to the pursuit on an idealized woman and the dreamy spiritual completeness to be found therein. In Bobbie Jonathan finds a partner whose masochism compliments his selfishness and emotional ambivalence. Jonathan does not want her to hold a job, but neither does he like the fact that she spends all day in bed sleeping, or watching TV. Sandy falls in love with his first collage romance, Susan; they marry and have children. But Sandy is haunted by the fear that he was too hasty, even though he and Susan lead a happy domestic life and strive to reinvigorate their sex life by making love "in all seven rooms" of their apartment. With Jonathan’s help, he enters into an affair with Cindy, a tough professional woman who turns Sandy off because she is too overbearing.