BEFORE: The last film in my 4-day Julianne Moore chain, and appropriately titled for the last film on the infidelity theme (I think...). I'm getting my posting done early today since it's a big weekend, not just the Oscars on Sunday, but also later today I'm going to a beer and food festival called A-Pork-alypse Now. Should be a good time.
Though my film is set in London, TCM's focus is on California today, and I've already seen "Bullitt" and "The Maltese Falcon". I'm going to pick up "East of Eden" and "The Grapes of Wrath", two films about California farms. This means I've got to pass on "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", "Bound for Glory", "Harry and Tonto" and "The Stunt Man". It's tough, but I had to prioritize.
THE PLOT: Novelist Maurice Bendrix has a chance meeting with Henry Miles, husband of his ex-mistress Sarah, who abruptly ended their affair two years before. Bendrix's obsession with Sarah is rekindled.
AFTER: I admit, I've seen parts of this film before - but really, only the naughty bits. Figured I should probably see the film around those parts.
I don't have any knowledge of the novel this is based on, but I'm betting the book was put together better. I've got major problems with the structure of this film, since events are seen mainly out of order, and that always bothers me. In this instance it has the added benefit of slowly revealing the story to the audience, but that's a poor excuse. If you can't tell me the story in a linear fashion, I'm betting it's not a very interesting one.
In addition to jumping around in time, from 1946 to 1941 to 1944 and back again, there's also another cardinal no-no - a flashback within a flashback. The whole thing is framed by a novelist typing up the story - so we see the events in the order he wants to talk about them, but that puts the heavy burden on me to keep track of what happened when, and honestly that's asking a lot. We even see the same event twice, from two different characters' points of view - I'd label that as lazy storytelling if we didn't learn more about the situation the second time around.
There are also bits that I thought were overly complex - a character hiring a detective to follow someone who he's also meeting for drinks seems a bit like overkill. And allowing the detective to give him a full report on that meeting when he was also RIGHT THERE seems completely unnecessary - unless he was testing the detective's powers of observation, which I guess is possible. But if his skills are better, why does he need to hire a detective?
But the film does do a good job of getting inside its characters' heads, which as I've seen in the last week, isn't always easy. There is a lot of "WHY" here - why does a person cheat, why does a person fall out of love with a partner, why does a person forgive someone for their infidelity. And once the affair is out in the open, how do people still get along and deal with each other in a rational fashion? Here, it seems to be because they're British, and very proper, and to yell and accuse and blame seems oh, so very common.
NITPICK POINT: The main character says that he hates God as much as he would if God existed. Well, if God is imaginary, how can he hate him? By hating him, he has to acknowledge him, which is contradictory. Unless he was referring to God as a concept, but I don't think he was.
Also starring Ralph Fiennes (last seen in "Clash of the Titans"), Stephen Rea (last seen in "Michael Collins"), Ian Hart (ditto), Jason Isaacs (last seen in "Green Zone").
RATING: 4 out of 10 surveillance photos
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