Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for her title performance in The Three Faces of Eve, but what she’s doing here feels like an exercise you’d see at theater camp. As Eve White, a housewife suffering from multiple personality disorder, Woodward literally holds her hands in front of her face when transitioning from one personality to the next, turning a psychological condition into a parlor trick. This is particularly unfortunate given the emphasis the movie places on the veracity of its story. Journalist and broadcaster Alistair Cooke introduces the film by assuring us everything we’re about to see is drawn from actual case records (so I’m assuming the real Eve White went to summer camp too). Lee J. Cobb costars as a doctor with questionable – and let’s hope highly fictional – treatment methods.
