Enduring Love Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)November 22nd, 2004
ENDURING LOVE
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2004 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
Roger Michell's ENDURING LOVE is a weirdly mesmerizing ode to obsession, guilt, madness, death and love. It has been described as a gay FATAL ATTRACTION, which it is, except the sexual attraction in this case only goes one way.
As the film opens, Joe (Daniel Craig) and Claire (Samantha Morton), two live-in lovers, are on a picnic in an enormous and idyllic English meadow. As Joe is about to pop a champagne cork and the question, Claire spies a horrible, freakish hot-air balloon accident in progress a few dozen yards behind Joe's shoulder. Joe and several other men rush to prevent the incident but can't quite stop the tragedy. The net result is that one of the rescuers, a GP (General Practitioner) dies in the process of trying to save a boy in the runaway balloon. In the story's best subplot, the GP turns out to have his own little mystery and strange back story.
Joe is haunted by a nightmarish guilt. He keeps thinking that he could have prevented the death if only he had held onto the balloon's rope longer. He becomes obsessed with balloons and even things in the shape of balloons.
Joe's guilt, however, turns out not to be his biggest problem. One of the other rescuers, a seedy and bizarre stranger named Jed (Rhys Ifans) starts stalking Joe. Jed is convinced that Joe once gave him a look which meant that there was something sexual between them. Jed is a really bizarre guy who tries at one point to use prayer as a kind of homosexual foreplay. The increasingly creepy Jed shows up at one point in a class that Joe is teaching and starts to sing, "If you should ever leave me, ..."
Eventually Jed drives Joe stark raving mad, which is just about the point in which this excellent drama becomes unhinged and dissolves into a standard-issue thriller. But the rest of the movie is worth seeing even if the last act is a disappointment. After the big ending, the movie has two little mini-endings that are quite intriguing and satisfying, reminding us how good most of the movie was.
ENDURING LOVE runs 1:40. It is rated R for "language, some violence and a disturbing image" and would be acceptable for most teenagers.
The film is playing in nationwide release now in the United States. In the Silicon Valley, it is showing at the Camera Cinemas.
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