Zee Blakely is a loud, coarse, 40-something socialite, whose marriage to her architect husband Robert is on the rocks as witnessed by their frequent verbal sparring matches.

[3] The theme song "Going in Circles" was covered by Three Dog Night, appearing as the b-side to the single "The Family of Man" as well as on their album Seven Separate Fools, both released in 1972.

Roger Ebert wrote that while the movie is "no masterpiece" it still satisfies audiences as it "unzips along at a nice, vulgar clip".

New York Magazine wrote: "The characters played by Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Caine and Susannah York are uniformly repulsive; the style completely vulgar; the dialogue moronic, and the situations simply beyond belief in this triangular affair.

Clive Hirschhorn felt the film was sabotaged by the director's "indulgent" take on it, thereby skewing Edna O'Brien's screenplay to its detriment (Hirshhorn, 1989: 298).