Unfaithful (2002)
Directed by Adrian Lyne
A New York suburban couple's marriage goes dangerously awry when the wife indulges in an adulterous fling.
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22 films that influenced Unfaithful
What critics say influenced Unfaithful
(The movie they go to see is Tati's "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday'' which, despite its stature on my list of The Great Movies, fails to compete with furtive experiments that would no doubt have Hulot puffing furiously at his pipe.)
The film sometimes almost functions as enjoyably overwrought trash cinema (a scene with Lane trying to "wash off" her infidelity in a train lavatory is so wildly over-the-top that it makes Tchaikovsky's nightmare honeymoon train trip in Ken Russell's The Music Lovers look like a ride in the back seat of a Rolls Royce), but it's all so deadly serious that this guilty pleasure aspect gets short-circuited.
And, of course, his provocative 1997 treatment of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita took full advantage of the relaxation of censorship since Stanley Kubrick's 1962 version, in which the verbal virtuosity of Peter Sellers served as a comic diversion from the nitty-gritty of nymphet worship.
The British-born director peaked with 1987's "Fatal Attraction" but then managed to follow that major success with an undeserved hit (1993's "Indecent Proposal") and a real clunker adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel "Lolita."
Lyne, whose Indecent Proposal and Fatal Attraction were much more eventful, lends remarkable significance to his characters’ betrayals, and probes surprisingly deeply into their motivations.
Director Adrian Lyne revisits the idea of infidelity, a theme he did so well in Fatal Attraction, but he gives the audience a different scenario in this new film.
Director Adrian Lyne ("Fatal Attraction") has always been a stylish filmmaker, but he gives "Unfaithful" much more than surface elegance.
Fortunately, there's very little of the Adrian Lyne that gave us Glenn Close as a psycho slasher in "Fatal Attraction" and Kim Basinger smeared with honey in "9� Weeks."
But while movies like Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal tried to put a new twist on infidelity with laboured, intricate plots, Unfaithful finds a way to tell a simple story, perhaps the simplest story of all, in a way that seems compelling and even original.
But, obviously, director Adrian Lyne did in this, his latest relationship study, following up on "Indecent Proposal" (1993), and "Fatal Attraction" (1987).
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We have come a long way from Celia Johnson's aborted adultery with Trevor Howard in David Lean and Noël Coward's Brief Encounter (1946), and even Max Ophüls' and Louise de Vilmorin's Madame de ... (1953).
This, in truth, is as it should be, given that Jan Kaczmarek's themes are maudlin and awful, genuine sins of cheap portentousness and fabricated poignance, and the lighting by Peter Biziou, who at least gave the corrupt Mississippi Burning a high-contrast chromatic urgency, bathes Unfaithful in such arid greys and blues that the film hardly seems to be happening.
Cinematographer Peter Biziou ("Mississippi Burning") and editor Anne V. Coates ("Lawrence of Arabia") serve Lyne's film well.
With all the makings of a great drama, "Unfaithful" borrows the best elements from "In the Bedroom" and ends up using them to their worst.
In the way it shows how complacency and convention can make bad things happen to decent people, this movie might tempt comparisons to In the Bedroom.
Without giving away too much of the plot, the character-driven first half of the film (much of it dedicated to the wonderful scenes of Lane and Gere tiptoeing around the truth), gives way to a plot-driven second half that resembles the overwrought histrionics of In the Bedroom.
I could have had about six extramarital affairs in the time it took to watch Unfaithful, a film that (d)evolves with Darwinian slowness from an air of bland diversion into some truly unsettling sexual politics, and tumbles from that already low plateau into an ersatz In the Bedroom , in which an emotionally distant husband and wife attempt to salve their suffering marriage with the odd balm of felony brutality.
It starts to feel like a discarded early draft for "In the Bedroom."
If the picture's trashier elements appeal to you, pass on "Unfaithful" and rent "Red Shoe Diaries" (the pilot for a 1992 Showtime series with David Duchovny and Brigitte Bako) which connects with its characters on a visceral level and is dead sexy to boot.
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Cinematographer Peter Biziou ("Mississippi Burning") and editor Anne V. Coates ("Lawrence of Arabia") serve Lyne's film well.
"Anne Coates on Editing" (not timed) finds the legendary editor of Lawrence of Arabia discussing Unfaithful's first sexual encounter as well as the picture's original ending.
Kate Burton ("Celebrity") and Margaret Colin ("The Devil's Own") make strong impressions in one amusing scene where they unwittingly interrupt Connie's assignation with Paul, then ogle the man.