You've probably read other reviews. I was quite disappointed watching this. Fortunately it was while I was ironing, so at least I found out that I didn't care for this movie while doing something more meaningful. I watched the 1931 movie, "Consolation Marriage" with Irene Dunn, Pat O'Brien and Myrna Loy on TCM next. The acting there is tremendous it that one, with dialogue almost being unnecessary; when 2 different people lose the ones they love to others, they meet by coincidence in a cafe and decide to get married on a whim with an arrangement that there would be no promise of a lasting commitment. When their old lovers try to come back, they realize that they really do love each other and for each of them, there was no going back to their previous lives and loves. It was powerful and believable.
"Blume in Love," however, is 2 hours of cinéma vérité. The plot is basically that Blume brings home his secretary one time and his wife finds them in their bedroom after apparently having had sex. The movie does give new meaning to the term "bringing your work home." His wife promptly walks out and demands a divorce. She refuses to forgive him, even though this is, apparently, his first and only time that he cheated on her. Ironically, Blume is a divorce lawyer. Blume then spends the rest of the movie with a stupid grin on his face obsessed with getting his ex-wife back. He explains the reason he wants his ex-wife back is because he can't think of anyone else when he's having sex with everyone else. The dialogue, such that it is, is often drowned out by background noises. We are also made to believe that Venice, Italy, has some kind of intrinsic magic that heals relationships. His wife, who works at a state unemployment office doing intakes, ends up shacking up with one of her clients in the form of Kristofferson, who plays the part of a musician who never plans to work while waiting for the world to come knocking on his door. One gets the impression that the dialogue was mostly ad libbed when KK's character starts talking about growing up in Brownsville, TX (and he was really from there).
There is nothing that makes you care for any of the characters and there is nothing to indicate that Blume and is wife have anything in common other than possibly sex and alcohol. Why they didn't have children is not explained, but one can assume that it was due to an unstated lack of commitment. Their relationship only substantially improves after Blume forces himself on his ex-wife and she subsequently becomes pregnant, also resulting in KK's character leaving her.
This movie, made in 1973, probably appeared to be pushing the acceptable boundaries of sex in movies for that time. When you get to see Marsha Mason's breasts, you realize that most people look better with their clothes on. And the sex is pointless to the extent that the plot doesn't justify it. I guess it was there to help sell movie tickets. Cliches abound, including the classic, weird-looking psychiatrist who says nothing until Blume suggests ending the therapy sessions. I was disappointed when he didn't say, "Sorry, our time is up." Even the ending with the apparent reconciliation between Blume and his ex-wife coming together in the plaza in Venice was a rip-off, done so many times in much, much better reconciliation movies, the best being "A Man and a Woman." There's no 360 degree camera rotation around them at the train station, nor is the music as memorable. Like the ending of "The Graduate," it is so preposterous as to question if it could even actually happen. A lot of things can keep a marriage together, but mutual respect and commitment are probably the most important. None of that was shown here, only Segal's stupid grin that you would like to knock off his face.