Three
It's the end of summer and two friends Taylor (Sam Waterston) and Bert (Robie Porter) decide to drive from Italy to France in an old car, a last hurrah before Taylor goes back home to study law. You find out during the course of film that Taylor comes from money, his father is a doctor. Bert trusts Taylor with managing the finances, because Bert doesn't have a lot of money, but Taylor is more than generous.The movie is paced deliberately with hints that youth is fleeting. The boys have a few clumsy attempts at being carefree and it's readily apparent that Bert is better at it that Taylor. Taylor is quiet and introspective and he is dependent on Bert to help bring him into social situations.One day by chance, Taylor is on his own when he meets Marty (Charlotte Rampling), a woman he later comes to learn is on her own, slumming it away from home in France because she didn't want to be anywhere near her mother and whatever number husband the mother is on. He likes her at once and he has the idea of inviting her along to journey with them back to France. They are to travel together but they are free to do whatever they want with two exceptions: each pays their own way and they are not to be intimate with each other. Taylor can't find it in himself to ask, so Bert does it and Marty accepts.During the course of the arrangement, even after a thinly veiled attempt to tell both of the men that she doesn't mind being with either or both of them, Bert finds a local girl and disappears for a while, leaving Marty and Taylor to their own devices. Marty tries to entice Taylor to sleep with her and even after a passionate embrace but in the end Taylor decides not to jeopardize the arrangement. He tells Marty indirectly that he's fallen for her, and he'll send her letter from the boat on the way home.After a drunken night out with Bert (who most likely suspects what has happened but doesn't say) Taylor changes a little. He tries to be more carefree, even talks of staying in France to go to school instead of going home. Bert has ended his fling and its back to the three of them traveling.The boys are due to leave within a week or so when the three of them are picnicking by the ocean. They witness a boat accident and a man is in obvious distress. Bert and Marty are passive about it, there's a boat in route and they believe the man will be fine. Taylor just can't stand watching this man struggle, so he jumps into the ocean and swims out to help. He doesn't make it to the man, as predicted a boat picks him up. As Taylor swims back, something happens (it's not abundantly clear to me if he has a cramp or is caught by the undertow) but he is shaken up by the experience.Bert and Marty want to go out that night but Taylor declines. Bert says he'll see Taylor later and departs. Taylor has a fitful night of sleep, the ocean haunting him. When he awakes, Bert's bed hasn't been slept in and Taylor correctly assumes that Bert and Marty spent the night together.Taylor leaves Bert his remaining money and a note, takes the car and leaves because the covenant between the three has been broken.
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