UNFAITHFUL (Adrian Lyne, 2002) R

Reviewed: May 14, 2002

Lyne's on his home turf (adultery and strained sexual liaisons) and he knows the terrain well. Surprisingly excellent, much better than Fatal Attraction and thankfully never interested in cheap eroticism, Unfaithful earns its sex and violence via skillful patience. This is an ultra simple premise (wife cheats on husband with foreign heartthrob; complications ensure), but Lyne and his writers have the self-control to take the premise where it logically wants to go. Never in a hurry, never forced, never boring, Unfaithful immediately sets itself far apart from the big studio packs who rush their plot developments at warp speed into contrivance hell. Diane Lane's stunning; no sobbing arguments or emotional explosions, but a lot of facial acting, flipping feelings around with a slight expression or an offhand remark. Richard Gere's husband is not carved from easy ol' uncaring, dispassionate jackass mold -- he's just an average, decent guy with some bad luck and bad timing -- and Gere's flawless in the role, selling a pent up, careless aggression with the proper restraint. Unfaithful is harder than most films; we don't know exactly why Lane wants to cheat on Gere, and wisely left without reductionist explanations, we're maturely asked/allowed to sense the myriad unspoken possibilities ourselves. The movie, to its vast credit, doesn't try and insinuate Lane's affair is, at its core, about more than sex (clearly the foreign heartthrob is essentially an exotic dildo), though Lane's cheating mind set is anything but banal.

Unfaithful looks wonderfully lush, depicting upper-class, suburban oppression with the right doss of hazy gloss. Lyne makes nice exaggerated use of close-ups, can shoot disorientation as powerfully as any director working and has a sublime sense of juxtaposition (or mainly his legendary, enormously versatile editor, Anne V. Coates, does; she's 77 years old and has cut everything from Lawrence of Arabia to Murder on the Orient Express to The Elephant Man to What About Bob? to In the Line of Fire to Out of Sight). Unfaithful's editing highlights include: Lane's flashbacks on the train home; heartthrob making coffee intercut with Lane in his bathroom; Lane's train platform dissolve; the jarring cut with Lane suddenly appearing at heartthrob's doorway. Lyne and Coates have faith in their visuals and there's no reliance on expository crap.

Unfaithful dramatically switches gears in its third act. Some critics were unwilling to follow the film to these places as they think a device that will go unnamed is cheap and unrealistic and, unimaginative bores they are, would I guess liked to have seen the film play out in the same exact (by this point repetitive) vein as it began. Horseshit, I counter. The filmmakers had the audacity to follow through with their convictions, the courage to go exactly where their premise took them. This is not an outta left-field convolution; the final act of Unfaithful, exciting and taut, is most definitely in keeping with the rest of the film tonally. Most importantly the device allows for the thus far best, most beautifully vague ending of the year (Lane's car speech to Gere and the final shot are poetically perfect).

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