THE END OF THE AFFAIR
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****):  * 1/2

"I felt nothing," the tragic female lead, Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore), says without visible emotion. "There was a stone where my heart should be."

The problem with writer/director Neil Jordan's remake of THE END OF THE AFFAIR, based on the Graham Greene novel, is that this could easily be said about the movie itself. Although Jordan attempts an old fashioned cinematic weeper, what he gets instead are talented actors reciting their lines with all of the fervor of someone reading the phonebook.

The camera studies the characters' faces in long close-ups, but they just look uncomfortable as if they were wearing hair shirt underwear. These pained expressions vary little, thus showing us how terminally unhappy everyone is.

Set just before, during and after World War II in England, the movie chronicles an affair between the morose Sarah and the equally melancholy Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes). He's a writer, and she's a wife, but not his. She shares a house and a loveless marriage with the dreadfully dull Henry Miles (Stephen Rea), a civil servant, who appears to be moving up in the government, not that anyone cares.

As the film opens in 1946, Maurice speaks to us in narration as he types, "This is a diary of hate." Whom he hates may come as a bit of a surprise, and in a movie as glacially slow as this one, having a small mystery to solve will help pass the time. There's another, more important mystery, but it is so easy to figure out that to say anything about it would give away its resolution.

After the opening, we flash back to when Maurice and Sarah first met. Although the labored acting and prose give little hint that they have the slightest romantic interest in each other, they are soon found dining t�te-�-t�te at a restaurant. "I'm in love with you," he says as matter-of-factly as though commenting on the quality of the veal. "Me too," she replies just as blandly. (The show keeps you waiting for an off-screen director to yell, "Cut!" and come on the screen to admonish his actors to show some emotional involvement in the material.)

And then there are the film's love scenes. Oh, they're quite explicit when it comes to clothing, but the actors keep their passions fully covered. They grope each other in all the right places, but their movements look more like posturing, as if they were paid models at a sculpturing class. Jordan tries to compensate by having the earth move for the couple, as most of their sex scenes take place as bombs fall outside their windows. Did I mention the time that Maurice lies down to have sex with Sarah without even loosening his tie?

The only completely satisfactory part of the story concerns the private investigator, Mr. Parkis (Ian Hart), that Henry suggests Maurice hire for him since Henry suspects that his wife is having an affair. Maurice, whose affair with Sarah appears to have ended, decides that she must be seeing someone else so Maurice engages the detective himself. Once Maurice begins to see Sarah again, the detective ends up spying on his own client. And it gets even more complicated. Throughout, Ian Hart is absolutely delightful, stealing scenes left and right as a meticulous and awkwardly serious investigator. Hart even keeps a straight face, when he has to listen to such lugubriously silly lines like: "As long as fools like us love, your employment never ends."

Filmed in such dark, gloomy tones by Roger Pratt, the movie frequently causes people's faces to be indecipherable. Given the lack of variation in their expressions, this probably means the viewer misses little.

Even if the audience may not find the story particularly rewarding, one suspects that Greene found it cathartic. "Pain is easy to write about," the writer Maurice says, "but what can one write about happiness?"

One thing that can be said of the movie is that it makes marital infidelity seem so incredibly boring, sad and passionless that it makes a strong argument against adultery as not much fun and a complete waste of time. (Actually, everyone in the movie, married or not, appeared absolutely miserable, but that's another story.)

THE END OF THE AFFAIR runs 1:45. It is rated R for scenes of strong sexuality and would be acceptable for older teenagers.

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