By Julie Phillips Jordan
Online Athens
Athens Newspapers
January 27, 2000
Stephen Rea (L) and Ralph Fiennes star in Neil Jordan's 'The End of the Affair' as two men involved with the same woman.
Another romance that can't find its happy ending
There is a stark sensuality associated with the period during World War II in Europe. It was the time of ``Casablanca,'' of Anais Nin and Henry Miller, of love and lust in a time of sexual stifling.
And it's a setting that lends interest as it broods in the background of Neil Jordan's ``The End of the Affair,'' an otherwise bland melodrama about an adulterous love affair.
Based on the said-to-be autobiographical novel by Graham Greene, the story follows English novelist Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes, who seems to have a penchant for the tragic love story, as evidenced by his roles in ``The English Patient'' and ``Oscar and Lucinda'').
In this case, Maurice runs into an acquaintance, Henry Miles (Stephen Rea), on a bitter, rainy evening. Henry confesses to Maurice that he's certain his wife, Sarah (Julianne Moore), is having an affair, and that he's considered hiring a private detective to follow her.
This is of particular interest to Maurice, who, unbeknownst to Henry, is the former lover of Sarah, and hasn't gotten over her in the two years since their affair ended. Maurice volunteers to go to the detective in Henry's place, to save face for his friend. But of course, Maurice's real interest is to satisfy his own feelings of bitterness and jealousy.
Enter Mr. Parkis (Ian Hart) and his young boy, Lance (Samuel Bould), the detectives who provide much needed comic relief amid the dreariness of this ill-fated love story. Of course, what Parkis and his boy uncover is a secret. But ultimately, the love triangle isn't so much between husband, wife and lover; it's between God, woman and lover.
But for all its suggestions of a woman coming to terms with her religious beliefs, and for all its symbolic references, the film's quite vague about hashing it all out. Sarah visits a priest, cries in church, says she believes in miracles.
But the focus of the film really is about the passionate love between Maurice and Sarah. And even so, the passion consists of little more than a handful of sultry love scenes and whispered vows of love. Sarah and Maurice fall for each other instantly; we never see conversations beyond Maurice telling Sarah he's jealous of her stockings, because they get to touch every part of her legs, and of her shoes, which will carry her away from him. It's steamy all right, but that's all it is.
And honestly, if I sat here and recounted the plot in full, you'd probably roll your eyes and wonder if you hadn't seen at least part of this on one of those Lifetime ``movies for women'' when nothing else was on TV, or read it in a paperback romance novel when you were 17. The only thing that saves the film from being a total loss is its strong direction from Jordan - replaying scenes for emphasis - its strong cast and tragic-romantic setting.
On several occasions, Maurice says that as a writer, he can't write about happiness - it's a creative void. It's also, perhaps, a reference to something written by Anais Nin: ``If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness, for I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience and creation.''
And I couldn't help but think how unfortunate it is that happiness should be considered so romantically elusive, that sadness should be the outcome of so many love stories. Sure it's the age-old story of unrequited love. But why do the stories always have to end when things get happy?
I mean, in this crazy world we live in, so full of uncertainties, of failed marriages and selfish breakups, we need to see a movie that begins with the happy ending, and with people finding strength in each other through the doldrums and the bad times. We certainly need it more than yet another movie affirmation about how wonderfully sexy adultery is.
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