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Featured Actress: Jacqueline Bisset - An essentially forgotten movie (largely eclipsed by The Summer of ‘42 released a couple years later), The First Time was one of the first coming-of-age movies to really focus on the hormonal sexual calls of adolescence, calls that could be answered by older women. Starring Wes Stern, both the movie and the actor were given a lot of hype back in the day, but neither made a significant splash. It’s rumored that Stern turned down Dustin Hoffman’s role in The Graduate in order to make this picture. Tough break that.
The storyline follows a trio of young lads who head up to Niagra Falls in search of a whorehouse where they can finally get their virginity put to rest. Things don’t turn out as they’d have liked, however, and the kids end up doing an about face when suddenly it appears their fortunes have changed. Meeting Anna, an extremely gorgeous - and very needy - older woman from Canada, they think they’ve found a prostitute who will usher them into the realm of manhood. Anna, however, is just looking for passage to the United States.
A slow pace and some uneven acting handicap The First Time, but it boasts an excellent turn by the astonishingly gorgeous Jacqueline Bisset as Anna. This is quite an impressive effort by Bisset as, given the screenplay’s startling naïveté and awkwardness, she manages to make Anna a real person, even if she does one rather unbelievable thing.
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