Drop your sno-globe and come out with your hands up!, January 5, 2003

By	Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Connie Sumner (Diane Lane) and her husband Edward (Richard Gere) seem to have all the ingredients for a perfect marriage after eleven years of togetherness. They live in a perfect house in an affluent New York City suburb and have a child, a well behaved son, enrolled in the perfect school. Edward is financially successful as the head of his own business, and is apparently an excellent provider. Connie doesn't have to work, but spends her time soliciting for charities. They have bountiful food on the table and drive upscale, late model cars. All are physically healthy. The household is free of disruptive emotional extremes.

Some would kill for much less.

One day in the Big Apple, a violent windstorm literally blows Connie into the arms of a used-book merchant, Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez), staggering down the street with a burden of tomes. Both fall to the pavement, Connie scraping her knee. Paul is young and handsome. Paul invites Connie up to his apartment for tea and band aids. Such is Connie's starvation for seduction and passionate intimacy that she's soon visiting the city on a regular basis for a discrete affair carried on not always so discretely. Edward becomes suspicious after odd answers to the usual end-of-the-day query, "What did you do today, honey?" Edward eventually hires a gumshoe to follow her.

I first saw Diane Lane in the TV miniseries LONESOME DOVE and thought "What a sweetheart!" In UNFAITHFUL, it's "What a Babe!" - but, hey, let's not allow that to color my opinion of her performance here. Lane is superb as a subliminally bored woman feeling the conflicting emotions - giddiness, guilt, exuberance, mortification - of an illicit affair, a turmoil wonderfully illustrated as we watch her face and body language as she comes home on the commuter rail after her first intimate encounter. Lane, not Gere, is the star of this film, though the latter is perfectly adequate as the man who slowly realizes he's being cuckolded. My minor disenchantment with the movie is an ending too open-ended for my taste, especially as it occurs in front of the local police station.

Though the viewer must certainly think that Connie is making a Big Mistake for the long term, I had sympathy for her short term actions. I'm left wondering if this is a gender-based opinion. Would I have felt different if the roles of Ed and Connie had been reversed, and the former had been doing the cheating? I suspect so. And would a female viewer have a harsher opinion of Connie's choices?

I liked UNFAITHFUL for the questions it raises. I think it much better than the response it received while in theater release. Oh, and I never realized sno globes were built so sturdily. Mine with the cute, little bunnies in the forest shattered early on.