Robert Ellis Miller has been dismissed as a director of "fluff" movies, but there are a few very specific elements that connect all this films. Any Wednesday (1966), Sweet November (1968), The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968), The Buttercup Chain (1970), The Girl from Petrovka (1974), and others suggest a world in which love is structured not around passion but contracts. The stories are built around sealed-off social environments. A small group, or individuals, enforce rules, rituals, and hierarchies that slowly turn malignant or unworkable.
