Vagaries & Crotchet

vagaries







Y

[vuh-gair-ee, vey-guh-ree] 



D



–noun

1. an unpredictable or erratic action, occurrence, course, or instance: the vagaries of [weather]; the vagaries of the [economic] scene.

2. a whimsical, wild, or unusual idea, desire, or action.



—Synonyms 

2. caprice, whim, quirk, crotchet.





　

Certainly ''Bad Timing,'' which opens the ''British Film Now'' series (it will be shown at the Paramount Theater at 5 and 8 P.M. today, and will open at the Sutton tomorrow), has a great deal in common with Mr. Roeg's other films. Once again, he teams a fragilelooking man with a woman of exceptional abandon. 



Art Garfunkel and Theresa Russell, echoing Mr. Roeg's casting of David Bowie with Candy Clark, Mick Jagger with Anita Pallenberg, and Donald Sutherland with Julie Christie, play Americans who meet in Vienna and become involved in a sexually [explicit], but not particularly torrid affair. 



Though the title refers to the vagaries of their [relationship], it could just as easily denote the pattern of the story's exposition. Scrambled flashbacks help complicate this tale, which begins as a tepid romance and ends with a tepid crime. 





capricious 

unpredictable, arising from sudden whim

a capricious [administration] constantly and [in]explicably changing its signals; 

a capricious and astounding reversal of [position]. 

fickle

underlying perversity as a cause

once [lionized], now [rejected] by a fickle public.

inconstant

innate disposition to change

an inconstant [lover], flitting from affair to affair.

vacillating

lack of resolution of firmness

an [indecisive], vacillating [leader], apparently incapable of a sustained course of action.

erratic

She is a very erratic [tennis] player.

Our rowboat's [course] was erratic after we lost the [oars].

He's too [erratic] a writer and 

too [flaccid] a director 

to balance the [smirky]-dirty humor with the [schmaltzy] sensitive shit. 

whimsical 

whimsy 

pixilated

He blows up [cropped] arms, legs and [genitals] so that they’re heavily [pixilated] and almost look like Grand Master paintings.

Hypochondria