Unfaithful Review
by Eugene Novikov (eugenen AT wharton DOT upenn DOT edu)July 9th, 2002
Unfaithful (2002)
Reviewed by Eugene Novikov
http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
"There's no such thing as a mistake. There's what you do and what you don't do."
Starring Diane Lane, Richard Gere, Olivier Martinez. Directed by Adrian Lyne. Rated R.
In Unfaithful, Adrian Lyne's stunning exploration of infidelity, Diane Lane cheats on Richard Gere with Olivier Martinez. Incredibly, we are made to care so deeply about this occurence, that when, about two-thirds through the movie, something actually happens, the film's rhythm is broken. 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.
The state of the Sumner family when the film begins is almost painfully idyllic. They live in a lovely single family home in the New York suburb. Gere's Edward is a successful entrepeneur whose income allows his wife Connie (Lane) to be a housewife, caring for their son (Erik Per Sullivan). Running an errand in the city, she gets blown over by the Winds of Change and winds up on the doorstep of French hunk Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez). He invites her in to clean up and take care of her scabbed knee. Exploring his extensive book collection (he's a used book dealer), she finds one with the inscription "Be happy for this moment; this moment is your life."
She's not sure what to think of Paul. She likes the way she treats her, selectively ignoring hints that he may be a scumbag with a few other women on the side. Before she knows it, she's made her way back to his Yber-romantic apartment, and begins living a lie, sneaking into the city at the drop of a hat to have increasingly daring sex with her new boy-toy. She betrays everything she is and everything she has for a few isolated moments of pleasure. Why?
Meanwhile, Edward becomes suspicious when, after firing an employee for lack of dependability, he is told to "take a look at your own damn family." (The same guy earlier caught a glimpse of Connie and Paul while being interviewed by a potential new employer.) He hires a private investigator to look into it, and after receiving some photographs, he does Something that should surprise very few.
Unfaithful kind of sneaks up on you. Vanilla relationship movies like this (or like we think this is until two-thirds of the way through) tend to bore me, and I was shocked to find at one point that I had forgotten what reel we were on. Lyne interweaves disarmingly subtle themes with an alluring narrative, at the same time snake-charming a phenomenal performance out of Lane, an actress who has stayed entirely in the shadows, turning in consistently dependable supporting turns in nearly every role. Turns out she's a luminous lead, helping us to sympathize with a character many other actresses would have inadvertently condemned.
Gere's character is more interesting in the first half of the movie than in the second. His reaction to his wife's infidelity is at first believable -- he goes over to the guy's house and introduces himself, taking a drink and inquiring about the various locations of their transgressions -- then less so, as Edward briefly becomes a puppet of the screen before again emerging; it gets worse before it gets better.
To be fair, the plot twist and its admittedly satisfying resolution are both consistent with Unfaithful's main theme: accountability. It doesn't particularly matter why Connie got involved with this guy in the first place. The movie doesn't give us a reason, but it doesn't lecture either; it understands, and so do we. Recently, I saw the Tony-winning Edward Albee play "The Goat," about a man who cheats on his wife with a goat. That play understood too. Suddenly, good old plain infidelity with another human being doesn't seem so apocalyptic after all.
Grade: B+
Up Next: About a Boy
© 2002 Eugene Novikov
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
