The scenarios in WOMAN TIMES SEVEN all deal with adultery and the relationships between the sexes. Reading the premises of each, they feel like prime opportunities for dark comedy: a meek housewife tries embodying her husband's silly sexual fantasies in the flesh, two lovers squabble over how they should carry out their suicide pact, a widow is seduced behind her husband's funeral procession, a faithful wife is tempted by the handsome detective her jealous husband hired to trail her, etc. However, they don't play very funny, despite the best efforts of MacLaine and her court of co-stars. I can't quite put my finger on why. Humor is indeed subjective, but I found a lot of the humor fell flat. I either found the characters too annoying or too pathetic to laugh at, and sometimes the comedy was just stupid (the one with the nude translator just felt so juvenile).
The stories are often thin with unsatisfying endings-- and when I say unsatisfying I'm not complaining about morals or happy endings. They just seem to run out of steam and stop, leaving you with the feeling of, "What was the point?" The running theme tends to be adultery, though the theme is treated with inspiration only here and there. The two best shorts were "At the Opera" which was an open comic farce that had nothing to do with the main theme at all and "Snow," which is lowkey and poignant, saying much about the desire to be desired. One wishes more of that sort of wistfulness had been as successful in the other stories.
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