Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 12-January-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Unfaithful (2002)

All the hubbub surrounding Diane Lane's chance for an Oscar nomination, coupled with strong initial reviews, finally led me to watch "Unfaithful," last year's adult date movie of choice. Although it is by no means a bad film, for me Adrian Lyne's latest voyeuristic-cum-moralistic tale mostly serves to confirm that Hollywood still values a woman's beauty and sexuality more than anything else. Should Lane take home a statue on Oscar night, she would become the sixth in the line of recent winners who struck gold largely by virtue of being gorgeous and unafraid to show a little (or a lot) of skin. (Going backwards, this list includes Halle Berry, Julia Roberts, Hilary Swank, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Helen Hunt --- fine actresses all, but usually admired most for their appearance and fashion sense.)

Lyne's résumé boasts such racy flicks as "9 1/2 Weeks," "Fatal Attraction," and a remake of "Lolita," so "Unfaithful" is not virgin territory. Lane stars as Constance Sumner, a woman just this side of 40 who, it appears, has it all: good looks, good health, a loving husband, a gorgeous Long Island mansion, and an adorable little boy. Indeed, her life is so perfectly secure that she yearns for a little excitement, although she doesn't realize it until chance blows her into the path of a handsome stranger named Paul (Olivier Martinez). Paul is, of course, dark and manly and slightly dangerous, but he's also everything that Connie's husband Edward (Richard Gere) is not: while Edward is approaching middle age, Paul is not yet 30; while Edward is a practical-minded American businessman, Paul is a French book seller who lives in a loft in Soho; and while Edward shades toward the nebbish with glasses and Mr. Rogers sweaters, Paul has long hair and stubble and would fit right in on a Paris runway. In short, Paul was born to be some older woman's adulterous boy toy, and it doesn't take long for him and Connie to succumb to the inevitable. But as Lyne's movies always expose, illicit sex is a tricky matter that never ends well. By the end, Connie, Edward, and Paul have all engaged in some degree of deception and have all been undone, in one way or another, by the affair.

The most striking thing about "Unfaithful" is that it is very prettily filmed and features beautiful shots of natural forces to represent human passions and conflicts (including wind and, especially, water in many forms). The story is not quite so striking. The movie at first appears to be what it advertises, namely an exploration of the causes, symptoms, and experiences of being unfaithful. The beginning does showcase a nice performance by Lane, as Connie discovers hitherto unexplored regions of her own personality. However, after the matter comes to a head, the focus shifts from infidelity (a juicy, interpersonal subject) to guilt (a more individual experience) and loses some of its potency. The ambiguous ending seems less an attempt at generating dramatic mystery and more the floundering of a screenwriter who wrote his characters into a particular situation but didn't know how to get them out in a satisfying way. While the events depicted in the film are all believable (with the exception of a couple minor little scenes), there isn't really much of a story arc here. So, in the end, what is the movie about? I am not quite sure.

I do have a theory, though. Lyne's wonderful visual style, paired with his penchant for erotic subjects, produces work that's really just chic titillation for educated, highbrow adults too old for teen skin flicks and too staid for standard pornography. (Considering how popular books of this nature are, as well as some of the stuff that passes for drama on TV, it's surprising that so few filmmakers are cashing in on this niche market.) There is a potentially thought-provoking storyline to "Unfaithful," but it serves primarily to show off how enviable the principals are (I mean, even the nerdy cuckold Edward, embodied by Gere, could turn some heads) and, therefore, to ramp up the delicious naughtiness of Connie and Paul's lusty scenes in bed (and in the stairway and the theater and the bathroom of the café). Beauty, balling, and big bucks: that's what gets everybody off, so that's what this baby's all about --- and that's why Diane Lane is out shopping for an Armani gown and six big guys from Tiffany's to guard her on Oscar night.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.