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Unfaithful film review
UNFAITHFUL
Running time: 123 mins
Starring: Diane Lane, Richard Gere, Olivier Martinez, Erik Per Sullivan, Chad Lowe
Unfaithful is the latest erotic thriller from director Adrian Lyne, who has devoted himself to exploring the devastating effects wreaked by sexual obsession, with such films as Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal and 9 ½ Weeks. As one of the generation of filmmakers who experienced the liberating impact of the 60's sexual revolution, Lyne is less prudish than many of his younger counterparts, who tend to depict sex as titillating and sordid rather than sensual and powerful.
Lyne's background in commercials is evident in the sleek, sumptuous images, but the film's sheen is achieved at the expense of a tangible reality. Unfaithful is a glossy morality tale woven around the adulterous affair of a beautiful woman whose perfect life and perfect marriage prove no match for the irresistible carnal urges triggered by a handsome young stranger. Diane Lane gives a formidable performance as Connie Sumner, who knows she is risking everything with her actions, but still can't stop herself. Rather than compensating for the film's shortcomings, Lane's authenticity and vulnerability only serve to highlight them. As she digs in search of her character, her excavations are hampered by the film's more superficial aspirations.
The issue of a wife's infidelity being prompted by desire rather than any failing on the part of the husband is one rarely explored in mainstream cinema. It's a shame then, that Unfaithful felt this was insufficient to sustain the drama and resorted to more flagrant actions, shifting the emphasis to that of a conventional thriller. The transition is so abrupt and stark, it's as though it were two distinctly different films.
The first begins with the idyllic life of the Sumners: Connie, her adoring husband of 11 years, Edward (Richard Gere) and their 8-year-old boy Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan). Living in a vast house in the New York suburbs, Edward runs a successful trucking company while Connie fills her days shopping and doing charity work. On a trip into a windy Manhattan, she is literally blown into the arms of French bookseller Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez). Sexy, charming and cultured, he invites her up to his apartment. The palpable sexual tension has Connie behaving like an awkward, embarrassed adolescent. When she realises how she feels, she starts to leave, declaring,"This is a mistake." "There's no such thing as a mistake," Paul corrects her, "there's what you do and what you don't do." And what they inevitably end up doing is having copious amounts of steamy sex at every opportunity.
As her once ordered life becomes recklessly neglected as the affair consumes her, Edward begins to suspect something and employs a private investigator to follow her. The scenes between the mistrustful Edward and Connie are quietly charged. "Do you love me?" he asks. "What a silly question," she replies, neatly sidestepping an answer. Although Gere's repressed portrait of Edward seems more calculated than convincing, particularly at the point when events catch up with him, resulting in the film's drastic change of tone, he and Lane enjoy a familiar understanding, having worked together on 1984's The Cotton Club.
"They always end disastrously," one of Connie's girlfriends says of infidelities. The arc of an affair, beginning with hope but ending in disappointment, can also be applied to Unfaithful.
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