PETER COYOTE’S QUARREL WITH CRITICS

The other night in Santa Monica, Peter Coyote and his wife went to see his new movie, “A Man in Love.”

The film broke down twice, once for 15 minutes. There was, he says, no apology of any sort. “Is it any wonder,” he asked afterward, “why people are often discouraged from going to see movies?”

But that, after all, was a minor inconvenience. The sense of deep frustration that has plagued this articulate actor since the film’s opening has nothing to do with projection room problems. It was caused by the almost universal condemnation of the movie by East Coast critics who trashed both his work and the film (“an unaccountably bad film,” said the New York Times; “an unbelievable story,” said the New York Post).

“A Man in Love,” directed in English by French film maker Diane Kurys, is about a married American star (Coyote) who goes to Italy to make a movie and falls in love with a young actress on the picture (Greta Scacchi).

“And with the exception of The Times (Michael Wilmington wrote, “There is passion in Kurys’ film and courage and intelligence”), the reviews have been vicious,” Coyote observed. “Why?

“The only conclusion I can come to is that the critics are faulting Diane because in their minds she has sold out by making a film in English instead of continuing to work in French and remaining the darling of a closed circle of intellectuals. Had the dialogue been in French with subtitles, I am convinced reaction would have been totally different.”

When actors and their movies are panned, custom decrees that they lick their wounds in private, voicing their anger only to close friends. So why is Coyote, much of whose previous work has found favor with the critics (“Cross Creek,” “Strangers Kiss,” “Jagged Edge”), seeking a wider forum?

“Because this is the first film in which I am unequivocally proud of my work and the work of other members of the cast,” he said. “I think it’s the best work I’ve done on film.”

(It must be said that East Coast critics weren’t the only ones to rap the movie. When it opened this year’s Cannes Film Festival, many French critics also dismissed it. However, it enjoyed a successful run in Paris.)

Coyote said that when Kurys first sent him the script of “A Man in Love,” he thought there’d been a mistake.

“Actors like me don’t get scripts like this. Or if they do, they lose them to someone with a bigger name. I just couldn’t believe I was being given the chance to play this role.

“Of course when you’re asked to play a movie star and you’re not a movie star, you can write the reviews in your head. But who could have expected them to be so vitriolic?” (“Coyote is just a cold, aloof sad sack,” wrote the New York Daily News.)

This is the second time he’s starred in a movie about the making of a movie. In “Strangers Kiss” he played a director. “That didn’t fare well either,” he said. But in other work he has often been singled out for his sharply intelligent performances.

“Since 1979, I’ve made some 25 films,” Coyote noted. “Sometimes I’ve done work which didn’t stretch me--in ‘Outrageous Fortune’ I was just an engine of the plot--but most of what I’ve done has been pretty interesting.

“I admit I’m smarting from the reaction to ‘A Man in Love.’ But the fact is Diane Kurys is a serious artist who has made three crackerjack films in France (“Peppermint Soda,” “Cocktail Molotov,” “Entre Nous”) and who to my mind has now made a powerful, emotional, romantic movie. So why the vitriol?” He shook his head. “It’s hard to understand.”