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Update, May 27, 2024: Due to health issues, I will be adding new reviews infrequently and posting old reviews from my archive. I will cont...

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Unfaithful (2002)

★★★
I've always viewed Adrian Lyne as a high-rent version of Zalman King. Whereas Lyne's films explore the darker side of human sexuality with tactful awareness, King's movies present shallow characters who get naughty with each other just for the sake of it (Delta of Venus). The two men collaborated on 9½ Weeks, but Lyne's direction overcame the premise's silliness. From that point on, Lyne has produced an interesting series of films about characters driven by lustful desires and their destructive effects on everyone involved. Fatal Attraction was a harrowing look at obsession, while Lolita examined the pedophilic tendencies of a middle-aged man. Unfaithful is about a housewife who cheats on her husband, her feelings about the affair and her husband's reaction to it.

Connie Sumner (Diane Lane) leads a comfortable life. She stays home while her husband Edward (Richard Gere) goes to work and her son Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan) attends school. Edward makes plenty of money for the family, so Connie takes care of business at home, does the shopping and occasionally goes to lunch with her friends. Her routine has never been challenged until she runs into Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez) on a windy day. She falls and cuts herself, and he helps patch her up in his apartment. Paul has an attractive mystique about him that Connie detects and tries to resist. Before long, the two begin an affair that has Connie lying about her whereabouts everyday. Edward suspects something is wrong with his wife and hires a private investigator to follow her.

The movie isn't only about Connie's affair; it is also about its effects on Edward. During a period of extreme confusion, he visits Paul's apartment to ask him questions about their affair. He learns that she talks about him, that she and Paul go out in public for lunch or movies, and that she gave Paul a gift that he had given her. Nothing has prepared him for the emotional rush he would feel upon learning of his wife's daily actions, so he acts out in fit of rage that is surprising yet plausible.

There is a tendency to make a movie like this too sensationalistic. The characters could have very well lashed out at each other or shown their anger by way of over-the-top theatrics, like in an episode of Jerry Springer. Instead, Adrian Lyne and his actors take their time to explore how reasonable people in this same situation might behave. Tears and heartbreaks aren't ruled out, of course, so the story benefits from an injection of real emotion and thoughtful analysis.

Adrian Lyne knows that adultery doesn't lead to a happy ending, so he remains true to the material and doesn't rely on star power or improbable reconciliations to end the story. That positions Unfaithful at the other end of the spectrum from An Affair to Remember, the Cary Grant/Deborah Kerr tearjerker. That 1957 effort was good in its own right (it's a different kind of story with different agenda) but it downplayed the reality of its characters' actions. On the other hand, Unfaithful is a serious story about a serious situation and earns high marks for its blunt approach.

© 2005 Silver Screen Reviews

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