Diane Lane gives a stunning performance in the (last?)
Every week, Entertainment Weekly is looking back at the biggest movies of the summer of 2002.
Join us for a rewatch of the first true summer of Hollywood’s strange new millennium.
Barry Wetcher/20th Century Studios
Next week: The clones attack.
And spoiler, Edward quickly starts to suspect something is amiss.
Are you a better human than me, hopefully?
Barry Wetcher/20th Century Studios
DARREN:Only Nixon could go to China, and only Adrian Lyne could makeUnfaithful.
Like you, I love the first hour, which enraptures Connie in a have-it-both-ways fantasia.
A biblical wind pushes her towards the dreamy Frenchman, who lives in a sexy SoHo library.
(They have a personal dock!)
Her face cycles through excitement, embarrassment, fear, and desire.
One subtle twist is that nothing really seems wrong with Connie’s marriage.
You always get the sense that she loves Edward, while she never really learns anything about Paul.
The affair is pure lust, andUnfaithfulisn’t even a proper thriller until the 70-minute mark.
Even then, the machinations of violence and paranoia are notably subdued.
Their relatable issues supercharge the melodrama.
Circa 2002, I thoughtUnfaithfulwas the start of a thoughtful new chapter for Lyne.
That didn’t happen.
In fact, the entire erotic thriller genre basically ended.
LEAH:Diane melting into the phone booth in Grand Central whenle garcontells her to come over!
You don’t get that on a T-Mobile plan.
I will beg to differ on one point: I think Edward is kind of a creep here.
Which is not to say she was remotely justified in running off to eff a Frenchman.
At least in 2022, she’d have a mommy blog or something: Connie the Influencer.
to take artfully framed black-and-white shots of your own cuckolding.
DARREN:Man, did 21st century technology just make the whole world less cinematic?
I’ll ponder that question while I consider the ending, which changes every time I watch it.
This go-round, Gere’s steadily-more-unglued performance made me think conscience nudges Edward into that police station.
Either path is bittersweet: a marriage rebuilt via homicide, a murder solved by separation.
The film landed between aSpider-Manand aStar Wars, franchises that still dominate the landscape decades after their origin point.
Edward might be a bit vacant, but he pays enough attention to catch Connie’s lies right away.
And Gere plays his cuckold with zero smoothness even his act of killing seems like a helpless tantrum.
He suffers, though poor Paul certainly suffers much more.
But it’s precisely that lush quality SoHo at its most boho that givesUnfaithfulits surprising edge.
Like Connie, we get trapped in an evocative fantasy.
(Leah, the soundtrack hasinstrumental Radiohead!)
The first hour builds a sexy snow globe for the audience.
The second hour bashes our head in.
Usually, the nice townsfolk get corrupted by the big city.
Here, a genial Manhattanite runs afoul of Westchester’s finest, and winds up dead in horrors!
