SOURCE: "A Painter's Descent into Sick Fantasy," in The Wall Street Journal, February 13, 1992, p. A17.

[In the following review, Salamon praises Secret Friends as a beautiful "twisted joke."]

Secret Friends is the perfect movie for people who hate Valentine's Day. In this unnerving portrait of sick love Alan Bates plays a middle-aged man who can no longer distinguish between his fantasy life and the real thing—mainly because he's spent such a long time propping up reality with make-believe.

But this is no dense psychological study in any conventional sense. This is the film directing debut of Dennis Potter, whose unique, darkly comic sensibility has been developed mainly in British television shows like Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective. Mr. Potter has written novels as well, and several film scripts, including the American film version of Pennies From Heaven and Dreamchild.

Mr. Potter's work has always revealed...