Le tre vite di Karen

Gail O'Grady performs here as a young woman suffering from fugue amnesia (repressed memory), forgetting blocs of years due to an inability to handle emotional stress, resulting in a compulsion to establish completely new beginnings. Her condition occurs twice, in each case inspiring a flight to fresh surroundings to avoid forms of mental distress with which her conscious mind cannot cope, and as the story begins she is Karen Winthrop, planning her wedding with her fiancé Matt (Tim Guinee). Shortly before the scheduled nuptials, an attorney, Paul Riggs (Dennis Boutsikaris), bewilders her by revealing that she is his wife Emily, vanished for four years, and that they are parents of a nine-year-old daughter, and during subsequent efforts by Karen/Emily to discover the truth about her other life, a third persona, Cindy, turns up from around a hidden corner of her past. As should be expected, the woman finds that dealing with these revelations is a bit knotty, as will a viewer having the many unanswered questions raised by a script that, while initially intriguing, fails to come alive during climactic scenes due to flawed plot contrivances, telegraphed dialogue, and a surfeit of choppy flashbacks. Set and shot in and near picturesque Southport, North Carolina, the film profits from good production values and contributions from the crew, with acting laurels going to Boutsikaris for his nicely stratified playing as Paul Riggs whose re-entrance into the amnesiac's life convulses her existence.