Unfaithful Video

Average Rating:

However, the acting of both Lane and--surprisingly--Richard Gere is superb. Lane's love scenes with Oliver Martinez are very steamy without ever becoming raunchy. One scene near the beginning of the movie during which Lane and Martinez simply hold hands for a moment is actually very powerful. Martinez is a very handsome man and plays his part adequately despite some very cheesy lines which made me want to laugh and detracted from the film as a whole. ("There are no mistakes. There is what you do, and what you don't do.")

There are also some very suspenseful scenes after Gere discovers Lane's infidelity, but Lane is not yet aware that Gere has made the discovery. The film features a cat and mouse game and some very palpable tension between husband and wife. Gere's and Lane's unasked questions and hurt expressions convey the tragedy of Lane's transgression.

Overall, a clever, well-acted, and beautifully filmed movie that kept me thoroughly entertained throughout. Though the film is made by the director of "Fatal Attraction," this is a more adult, understated and compassionate take on the traditional themes of infidelity and revenge.

What rescues this latest look at adultery is Diane Lane's performance. Lane has always been better than the majority of films in which she's appeared. This time out, she hits it right on the money--deservingly nominated for an Academy Award. Gere is considerably less believable as the husband for whom integrity is everything. (It's interesting that he pulls a hat trick in Chicago but wasn't nominated for, arguably, the best performance of his career.)

Erik Per Sullivan is lovely as the son of this couple; a child actor who actually looks like a real kid. And Olivier Martinez is hugely appealing as the young Frenchman Lane finds so compellingly attractive.

Ultimately, the wheels come off this vehicle and it hits the wall. It just doesn't want to end; there are three, four, five intimitations that it's finally over. But, no. On it goes. And the final scene, perhaps meant to leave us wondering, merely leaves us relieved that this movie, at last, has come to an end.

Definitely worth seeing for Diane Lane, and for some lovely cinematography. But Adrian Lyne should go back to making TV commercials or find different material.

In terms of the plot, "Unfaithful" is really "Fatal Attraction" viewed from the other side. In this case, it is the wife, not the husband, who becomes the philanderer, and the betrayed spouse, not the odd-angled home wrecker, who becomes the killer. Richard Gere and Diane Lane star as Edward and Connie Sumner, a seemingly happily married couple who live with their son, Charlie, in a bucolic suburb of New York City. One day, in the midst of an urban windstorm, Connie literally bumps into a handsome French hunk named Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez) with whom she ends up having an affair. Paul's nationality is probably no arbitrary plot point since the Alvin Sargent/William Broyles Jr. screenplay is based on Claude Chabrol's famous 1969 film "La Femme Infidel."

As a director, Lyne certainly knows how to spin a good yarn, and, despite the fact that everything that occurs on the screen seems conventional and familiar, we are, nevertheless, drawn into the emotional plight that this attractive woman finds herself going through. As with all films of this type, "Unfaithful" features the obligatory scene wherein the adulterous party bumps into her gossipy girlfriends within a stone's throw of the new love interest and has to pretend that everything is hunky dory and peachy keen in her marriage. We also have the inevitable sequence in which the bold lovers are passionately making out in a restaurant while an acquaintance of the woman, unbeknownst to her, is busy taking copious mental notes of the proceedings. I also find it interesting that movies featuring female adulterers as main characters always seem to have an inordinately high number of scenes set on commuter trains. This convention goes all the way back to the 1940's and David Lean's great film "Brief Encounter" and can be seen in 1984's "Falling in Love" with Meryl Streep as well. It's just an observation, for what it's worth.

Much of the success of "Unfaithful" can be attributed to Diane Lane, who manages to make her character both believable and touching, even in those moments when she is seen as being at her least morally attractive. Though we may reject what she is doing on an intellectual level, we can certainly identify with the immense internal struggle she is going through between intense, physical passion on the one hand and a sense of duty to husband and family on the other. Had the movie been content to play out the story in a more realistic way, it might have avoided the disappointment that comes in the second half. I guess that the filmmakers felt that trying to resolve this dicey situation without resorting to melodrama would make for less of an impact at the box office, so we are confronted with the inevitable shift to a crime thriller scenario. In a way, the filmmakers are to be congratulated for at least toning down this aspect of the plot, which - as it did in "Fatal Attraction" - could easily have spiraled off into over-the-top excess. Yet, for some odd reason, the result of this subtle approach is, paradoxically, to give to the movie an unformed and unfinished feel, as it dribbles away into a lady-or-the-tiger copout ending.

Although Lane does a beautiful job capturing the subtle emotional nuances of her character, the same cannot always be said for Gere, who comes across as stiff and stodgy much of the time. Even worse is Olivier Martinez, who barely registers at all in the poorly written part of the dashing young lover. In all fairness to the actor, however, one should note that he isn't really given much to work with here. The real scene-stealer turns out to be young Erik Per Sullivan, the youngest brother from "Malcolm in the Middle," who lights up the screen with his unaffected, good-natured charm.

It's been a long time since I've seen Chabrol's "La Femme Infidel," but I remember feeling, as I was watching that film, that, despite the fact that the story itself was conventional and almost hackneyed, I was in the hands of a master artist who could make me see truths contained in the material that I had never perceived before. Lyne's film, though involving at times, never gets close to that level of mastery and insight. "Unfaithful" has its moments, but it ends up settling for competency at the expense of artistry.