High Infidelity

Adrian Lyne is quickly becoming one of my favorite directors. I've been slowly (very slowly, grad school is crazy) renting his films from Netflix and it's interesting to watch them all so close together. He seems to be drawn to the complex emotions that exist between men and women when sex and love get all mixed up with each other. (It helps that his movies are particularly well cast.) He's directed a lot of popular films (including Flashdance) and I've always loved Indecent Proposal. Two weekends ago I watched 9 1/2 Weeks and tonight I watched Unfaithful.

I'd already seen Unfaithful. I rented it shortly after it came out on video -- I wanted to see if Diane Lane deserved her Oscar nom. Her performance is wonderful, but overall I remember being unimpressed. In fact, I thought it was downright stupid. (I should warn you now, this will contain spoilers. If you haven't seen Unfaithful and want to, stop reading immediately or it will be utterly ruined. Consider yourself warned.) After a second viewing several years later, I find myself of a much different mind.

If you've seen the movie, I suggest skipping to the next paragraph. If you haven't, and you aren't bored with this post already, then read on. The basic premise is that a beautiful, intelligent, bored suburban wife and mother (Lane) initiates a torrid affair with a young, gorgeous, French book dealer living in SoHo (Olivier Martinez - yum!). The husband is played brilliantly by Richard Gere. As her affair spirals further and further out of control, the husband's growing suspicions find him hiring a private detective to follow his wife. Once he has undeniable photographic proof he heads to the lover's apartment and accidentally ends up killing him when he discovers that his wife has given her young lover a gift that he had given to her years before -- a snow globe. He dumps the body in a massive garbage dump. Days pass, he says nothing. She eventually finds the photos from the private detective in his coat pocket a week later, after the police have come to see if she knows where her young lover is, and when she finds the snow globe back in its place on the window sill, she not only knows that her husband knows about the affair, but also that her husband has murdered her lover. The movie ends with husband and wife sitting in their car in front of a police station, contemplating whether to run away to Mexico with their nine year old son or turn themselves in. The viewer is left to guess. I personally think they turn themselves in.

The first time around I disliked the movie because I hated Diane Lane's character. I thought her selfish and foolish and could not for the life of me figure out why she would risk destroying what is depicted as a wonderful marriage -- to a handsome man like Richard Gere at that! I felt like it was her fault that her husband ended up cracking open the young lover's skull with the snow globe, and I wanted her to go to jail. I was mad at the way the movie ended, I thought it let her get away with murder. Upon a second viewing, I still think that she is selfish and foolish, but I feel sorry for her. I still don't know why she does what she does, and maybe I never will (hopefully not!), but she just seems so desperate to feel excited. Excited in a way her husband can't make her feel. I wonder if that is why a lot of married people cheat? Does the sex and the intimacy lose its excitement so much that they look for it elsewhere? No doubt that is the reason for some people. Who knows about the others. Fortunately most of them just end up getting divorced, not committing murder. This is the kind of movie that makes me afraid of marriage. Either way, it's a movie worth renting. I'll be watching it again before I send it back to Netflix!