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Movie Review

Unfaithful (2002)

May 8, 2002

FILM REVIEW; Day in Town Takes an Unexpected Tryst

Published: May 8, 2002

Sex is such a profoundly disruptive force in Adrian Lyne's film ''Unfaithful'' that as you watch it with your heart in your throat, you realize the degree to which Hollywood has succeeded in reducing screen sex to a fashion accessory. Its purpose in most movies nowadays is to embellish a story with enough (but not too many) discrete fillips of titillation and soft-core fantasy to quicken the pulse without causing palpitations.

''Unfaithful'' crashes through that mold by acknowledging that sex, especially reckless adulterous sex, can rock people's lives and have catastrophic consequences. The lovemaking in ''Unfaithful'' leaves deep emotional imprints. In the most extraordinary scene, Connie Sumner (Diane Lane), a beautiful, happily married suburban housewife and mother of a young son, mentally relives the details of her first extramarital tryst while taking a commuter train from Grand Central Terminal home to Westchester County.

Connie is so absorbed in the memory of an encounter that has left her dazed and exhilarated that her features subtly re-enact the contortions of ecstasy, joy and trepidation she experienced during sex. It's only at this point that the film shows us the tryst, flashing back and forth between Connie's afternoon of passion and her delirious recollection. The portrait of someone unstrung by a single sexual encounter is disturbing for being so entirely convincing.

Ms. Lane has the role of her career in Connie, and her indelible (and ultimately sympathetic) performance is both archetypal and minutely detailed. Connie is the embodiment of a confident supermom who seems to be in supreme control of her complicated upscale suburban life. It is precisely because she believes she can handle any situation that she foolishly surrenders to an erotic whim. But as her affair intensifies, she becomes increasingly careless and distracted and finally jealous. You sense that were she to end the affair without being caught, putting the pieces of herself back together would still be extremely difficult.

In many ways ''Unfaithful,'' adapted from Claude Chabrol's film ''La Femme InfidÃ¨le,'' could be described as ''Fatal Attraction 2.'' Once again a tranquil suburban marriage is endangered by a reckless indiscretion (in big, bad New York City) that spins wildly out of control. And once again the sex is explosive and edged with violence. As in ''Fatal Attraction,'' the lovers are so besotted that when the urge overtakes them, they have sex standing up, and their frantic rutting, instead of satiety, leaves them raw and aching for more.

''Unfaithful'' doesn't repeat the ''Fatal Attraction'' mistake of turning into a horror film with a pat, reassuring ending. Although this movie pays a witty, deadpan homage to the notorious bunny rabbit scene in that 1987 movie, it steers a much more ambiguous path toward a sad, surreal twilight zone of guilt and hopelessness.

When Connie and her lover, Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez), first meet, they literally collide on the street outside his SoHo apartment on a windy day. When she trips and falls, he coaxes her upstairs to bandage her skinned knees. Connie's rescuer turns out to be a charmingly insolent French dreamboat who is staying in a borrowed apartment where he deals in rare books.

Paul preaches a tantalizing live-in-the-moment philosophy that appeals to Connie because it runs so counter to her life of family responsibilities and school and charity events. Not long after their first meeting, she returns to New York to thank Paul. He puts the moves on her, and after a halfhearted struggle she succumbs.

Compared with Paul, Edward (Richard Gere), Connie's devoted husband of 11 years, who runs a successful but unspecified business that involves shipping products by truck, is not especially glamorous. He is reasonably handsome and still in love with his wife, but under his apparent calm you sense a fierce watchfulness and grinding tension. When a longtime colleague announces he's leaving the company, Edward, who values loyalty above everything, takes the departure as a personal betrayal and turns on him furiously.

In portraying Edward, Mr. Gere, who is now 52, has shucked off the preening narcissism of his younger days to give a performance that is remarkably devoid of vanity. In what may be the most emotionally affecting scene of Mr. Gere's screen career, Edward, having amassed damning photographic evidence of his wife's affair, visits her lover's loft and inexorably loses control. At this point the story turns into a melodrama with resemblances to ''In the Bedroom,'' although the earlier movie's investigation of violence and its impact on a white upper-middle-class couple who have considered themselves above crimes of passion cut much deeper.

''Unfaithful'' has a taut, economical screenplay by Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr. that digs into its characters' marrow (and into the perfectly selected details of domestic life) without wasting a word. That screenplay helps to ground a film whose visual imagination hovers somewhere between soap opera and a portentous pop surrealism.

Mr. Lyne's fondness for high-gloss, television-commercial-ready imagery was the most glaring flaw in his otherwise moving screen adaptation of ''Lolita.'' Here, the cinematography shamelessly fetishizes the Sumners' model-perfect home and the objects inside it. And the exaggerated windstorm that blows Connie and Paul into each other's arms is almost as pushy (and phony) a symbol as the white tornado in a cleanser commercial.

As scrupulously as Ms. Lane and Mr. Gere delineate their characters, Connie and Edward emerge as an American Everycouple of a certain class and background, while Paul becomes a generic Continental rake. But as the movie darkens and becomes a desperate and not always convincing tale of crime and cover-up, ''Unfaithful'' takes Mr. Lyne into areas where he has never gone.

The saddest and most unsettling element of ''Unfaithful'' is its portrayal of an affluent, articulate couple who for all their individual sensitivity can barely bring themselves to communicate on a less than superficial level. Does a successful middle-class marriage really require this amount of emotional suppression? If so, God help the institution. Even after Connie's affair is long over, and the Sumners are clinging to each other in fear and uncertainty, they cannot bring themselves to address the past. The best that Connie can manage is two words: ''I'm scared.'' She has every reason to be.

''Unfaithful'' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has intense sexual situations and scenes of violence.


Directed by Adrian Lyne; written by Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr., based on the film ''La Femme InfidÃ¨le,'' written and directed by Claude Chabrol; director of photography, Peter Biziou; edited by Anne V. Coates; music by Jan A. P. Kaczmarek; production designer, Brian Morris; produced by Mr. Lyne and G. Mac Brown; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 110 minutes. This film is rated R.

WITH: Richard Gere (Edward Sumner), Diane Lane (Connie Sumner), Olivier Martinez (Paul Martel), Kate Burton (Tracy), Margaret Colin (Sally), Erik Per Sullivan (Charlie Sumner) and Dominic Chianese (Frank Wilson).

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