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Unfaithful (Widescreen Edition)

Unfaithful (Widescreen Edition)

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Thought Provoking
Review: While I must admit that this was an erotic movie that was more than I expected. Richard Gere plays the unaware (in the beginning) husband who reacts calmer to the circumstances initially that you would think. But things change in a heartbreak. Diane Lane does a wonderful job as the confused housewife who has something missing in her life she can't put a finger on.

What struck me most about the movie was the way it made you think on it. There were many little clues left on avenues that were never followed up on. The effect was to leave you thinking about what may have been going on behind the scene. Was everything like it appeared? The movie does not answer many of your questions but it does make you think (if you are prone to ponder).

A movie worth seeing, if you take a date, sit close. Many scenes will leave you wanting to sit close - for good reasons.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A very disturbing film
Review: A very intriguing film that will disturb you for days. Diane Lane is a highly underrated actress.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good thriller
Review: Check this one out. Great performaces and good story lead to
a top notch movie. If you liked Fatal Attraction, this is your
type of movie.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fast Lane, low Gere
Review: Director Adrian Lyne reels us in once again with his patented mix of neon-lit soft-core sex and a lurid tale. Richard Gere and Diane Lane are the "happily" married yuppie couple (with a Martha Stewart-perfect house in the country, natch) whose lives are turned upside down by the wife's torrid affair with a smouldering Gallic Casanova (Olivier Martinez). Lane and Martinez "meet cute" on a blustery NYC day when they are literally blown into each other's arms (right in front of his cozy Soho loft, convieniently) and in short order they're making torrid love in various stairwells, hallways and public restrooms (and likely to put some chiropractor's kid through college!) The story then turns into a fairly standard by-the-numbers Film Noir love triangle, with a whiff of "Crime And Punishment". If there is one compelling reason to see this film, it is Diane Lane, who has been getting better with each performance since making her breakthrough in "A Walk On The Moon". Gere is good, but fairly low key; newcomer Martinez plays his character like a cross between Chris Walken's "Continental Guy" on 'Saturday Night Live' and (accidently on purpose?) a young Richard Gere, but it is Lane who rises farthest above the workmanlike script and wrings out the most convincing emotional depth.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not a work of art, but entertaining
Review: I've never been a fan of director Adrian Lyne; I've always thought he treated his female characters badly. In this one, however, he seems to have mellowed a bit. Diane Lane plays Connie Sumner, a married woman who falls into a love affair with a hot young French guy. I've followed Diane Lane's sporadic career for years, and she gives the best performance of her life here. The complexity of her situation is reflected on her face and in her actions. As her husband, Richard Gere is more one-note, and turns out to be the real villain of the film in my opinion--you'll have to see the movie to understand why. The movie has no real moral or lesson to teach--it just presents a compelling story of adultery with a few genuine surprises. It's not a work of art by any means, but it's entertaining, thoughtful, and has some great performances. Worth the price of admission, which is more than you can say for most of the other box-office choices this weekend.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: intriguing but flawed (spoilers)
Review: Like his earlier smash hit, "Fatal Attraction," Adrian Lyne's "Unfaithful" is a cautionary tale for would-be adulterers. More muted and less of a rabble-rouser than the previous film, this new work provides generally good, solid entertainment within the confines of its overworked genre.

In terms of the plot, "Unfaithful" is really "Fatal Attraction" viewed from the other side. In this case, it is the wife, not the husband, who becomes the philanderer, and the betrayed spouse, not the odd-angled home wrecker, who becomes the killer. Richard Gere and Diane Lane star as Edward and Connie Sumner, a seemingly happily married couple who live with their son, Charlie, in a bucolic suburb of New York City. One day, in the midst of an urban windstorm, Connie literally bumps into a handsome French hunk named Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez) with whom she ends up having an affair. Paul's nationality is probably no arbitrary plot point since the Alvin Sargent/William Broyles Jr. screenplay is based on Claude Chabrol's famous 1969 film "La Femme Infidel."

As a director, Lyne certainly knows how to spin a good yarn, and, despite the fact that everything that occurs on the screen seems conventional and familiar, we are, nevertheless, drawn into the emotional plight that this attractive woman finds herself going through. As with all films of this type, "Unfaithful" features the obligatory scene wherein the adulterous party bumps into her gossipy girlfriends within a stone's throw of the new love interest and has to pretend that everything is hunky dory and peachy keen in her marriage. We also have the inevitable sequence in which the bold lovers are passionately making out in a restaurant while an acquaintance of the woman, unbeknownst to her, is busy taking copious mental notes of the proceedings. I also find it interesting that movies featuring female adulterers as main characters always seem to have an inordinately high number of scenes set on commuter trains. This convention goes all the way back to the 1940's and David Lean's great film "Brief Encounter" and can be seen in 1984's "Falling in Love" with Meryl Streep as well. It's just an observation, for what it's worth.

Much of the success of "Unfaithful" can be attributed to Diane Lane, who manages to make her character both believable and touching, even in those moments when she is seen as being at her least morally attractive. Though we may reject what she is doing on an intellectual level, we can certainly identify with the immense internal struggle she is going through between intense, physical passion on the one hand and a sense of duty to husband and family on the other. Had the movie been content to play out the story in a more realistic way, it might have avoided the disappointment that comes in the second half. I guess that the filmmakers felt that trying to resolve this dicey situation without resorting to melodrama would make for less of an impact at the box office, so we are confronted with the inevitable shift to a crime thriller scenario. In a way, the filmmakers are to be congratulated for at least toning down this aspect of the plot, which - as it did in "Fatal Attraction" - could easily have spiraled off into over-the-top excess. Yet, for some odd reason, the result of this subtle approach is, paradoxically, to give to the movie an unformed and unfinished feel, as it dribbles away into a lady-or-the-tiger copout ending.

Although Lane does a beautiful job capturing the subtle emotional nuances of her character, the same cannot always be said for Gere, who comes across as stiff and stodgy much of the time. Even worse is Olivier Martinez, who barely registers at all in the poorly written part of the dashing young lover. In all fairness to the actor, however, one should note that he isn't really given much to work with here. The real scene-stealer turns out to be young Erik Per Sullivan, the youngest brother from "Malcolm in the Middle," who lights up the screen with his unaffected, good-natured charm.

It's been a long time since I've seen Chabrol's "La Femme Infidel," but I remember feeling, as I was watching that film, that, despite the fact that the story itself was conventional and almost hackneyed, I was in the hands of a master artist who could make me see truths contained in the material that I had never perceived before. Lyne's film, though involving at times, never gets close to that level of mastery and insight. "Unfaithful" has its moments, but it ends up settling for competency at the expense of artistry.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Simply stunning. Haunting & atmospheric. Diane Lane superb
Review: DIANE LANE (The Perfect Storm) is superb in this powerful and engrossing film about the effects of infidelity. Part thriller, part drama and part character piece, this is a stunning movie that goes for subtlety and atmosphere. It's a great, haunting film that will have you talking all the way home and thereafter. Nobody does movies like these better than Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction), but Lyne hasn't just served up Attraction 2. This is an altogether worthy movie that is near perfect.

Diane Lane should win an Oscar for her very committed (and extremely sexy) performance. 5 out of 5 - highly recommended.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Hollywood MORALIZING???
Review: Someday, when all the hype and promotion for this movie is long over, people will begin to realize how truly BAD this movie actually is. Diane Lane does an acceptable job in her part as the wayward wife, but Richard Gere actually appears embarrassed to be seen on screen. He has good cause to be. Get this: Mainstream Hollywood actually tries to moralize throughout this movie! As expected, fire and ice don't mix at all and it comes across completely dysfunctional. It is also painfully predictable and ponderously boring for long stretches.

Trust me on this one: Go see Spiderman or anything else but this ticking dud.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One Of The Best Movies Of 2002
Review: I abosolutly loved this film. Richard Gere and Diane Lane give out Oscar worth performances in this extremely intense and surprisingly unpredictible film. I loved every minute of this film and by the end I wanted to see so much more with these characters, but unfortunalty, it had reached 2 hours at that point, and I guess that was enough for the director. In a time of movies like Spider-Man and Star Wars, I feel the film came out a the wrong time, and won't recieve the attention it deserves, which is horrible, because this film is so unbelievably fantastic, anyone who watches it will be blown away, hopefully it makes it big.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: This Movie is Hot
Review: I mean HOT. Make no mistake about it: It's Hot and Steamy; you'll get a rise out of it. But the reason I gave it 3 stars was because the plot is predictable, the resulting fury of her husband when he finds out goes unpunished, she herself goes unpunished, and the movie ends lamely. Quite honestly, after I saw this movie, I couldn't stand Gere's guts.


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