Consenting Adults

Richard and Priscilla Parker live a comfortable suburban life, and the arrival of new neighbors Eddy and Kay Otis at first seems to add some excitement to it. The two couples grow close, but Eddy's suggestion that they take their friendship further, swapping partners for a single night, sets off a chain of events that leaves Kay dead and turns the Parkers' orderly world upside down. The film is a thriller about how a seemingly harmless invitation curdles into suspicion and danger.

Alan J. Pakula directed from a screenplay by Matthew Chapman, and also produced with David Permut. It was Pakula's ninth theatrical feature and followed Presumed Innocent, arriving between that 1990 release and The Pelican Brief in 1993. Kevin Kline and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio play the Parkers, with Kevin Spacey and Rebecca Miller as the Otises, and Forest Whitaker and E.G. Marshall in supporting roles. The production cost about 18 million dollars and returned roughly 22 million worldwide, a modest result for a studio thriller of its period.

Audience response was lukewarm: on TMDB it holds a 5.4 rating from 176 votes, while critics were harsher still, giving it 4.2 out of 10 across 14 reviews. The gap between the two is small; neither group treated the film as a highlight of Pakula's later career.