OVP: Unfaithful (2002)

Film: Unfaithful (2002)

Stars: Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Olivier Martinez, Erik Per Sullivan

Director: Adrian Lyne

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Diane Lane)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

One of the things to keep in mind when you talk about the Oscars is that oftentimes, the best movies are not across-the board successes in every category.  The Academy frequently forgets this, nominating a movie for every category it can conceivably be considered for, but most often a film can have, say, average Sound Recording or Art Direction even if it's overall an outstanding picture.  The opposite, though, is true too.  Terrible films can occasionally have jewels embedded in them, and it's weird to notice when Oscar realizes this, saving an otherwise forgettable film from obscurity, or just letting some hidden gem live on in the picture.  In 2002, they managed to do the former.  Diane Lane in 2002 was kind of a "has-been" or at least "someone who hadn't fulfilled their potential;" a promising child actress, her career languished in the 1980's due to the high-profile flops Streets of Fire & The Cotton Club, and while she'd had successes (most notably Lonesome Dove), she was not the headliner she could've been.  That changed, though, with Unfaithful, which won her her only (to date) Oscar nomination, and her first massive hit as an adult leading woman.  The movie in question might have given Lane a well-earned moment of true stardom, but it's also, well, really bad.

(Spoilers Ahead) We're getting ahead of ourselves, though-let's establish what the film itself is about.  Edward (Gere) and Connie (Lane) Sumner live in a posh Westchester home with their son Charlie (Per Sullivan).  The two have a seemingly idyllic marriage, but it's filled with boredom-they love each other, but the fire in the relationship has gone out.  One day (in a near comical windstorm), Connie meets Paul (Martinez), a younger book seller who treats her from an injury during the windstorm, and then comes onto her.  Connie resists, but she's intrigued by him, going back to see Paul, and eventually they start an affair.  Edward begins to catch onto the affair, which Connie begins to question particularly when it becomes clear that Paul is having this kind of relationship with other women.  Edward confronts Paul, and in a jealous rage (after seeing a snow globe he gave his wife & now she gave Paul), he hits Paul on the head with it, killing him instantly...and as he's cleaning up after the crime, Connie calls & breaks off the affair on Paul's answering machine, thus a sense of irony that he just killed a man who is no longer a threat to his marriage.  The remaining act of the film is Connie being a suspect for the crime, realizing that Edward knew about the affair & killed Paul, them reconciling, and then in the film's closing scenes, them making plans in front of a police station, likely just moments before Edward turns himself in.

Unfaithful is a film that at times is so ludicrous you almost think it should be played for comedy.  One of my main issues with movies is when they have otherwise intelligent people behave foolishly to advance the plot, and Unfaithful is just a seemingly continual series of that.  We're somehow meant to believe that Connie doesn't realize she's a notch in this guy's bedpost after she spots him with another women.  We're also expected to believe that Edward, a seemingly miild-mannered man, not only kills Paul in a jealous rage (in a weird scene where it seems like he's going to have a heart attack before he does it), and then somehow manages to lug a body wrapped in a rug in broad daylight (in Manhattan!) into the trunk of his car, brings the body to a dump site (where it's never actually found within the confines of the film)...and somehow still manages to put the murder weapon, the snow globe, back with his wife's snow globe collection, where she'll inevitably figure out that he stole it from Paul & murdered him?  Where is the logic here-it's utterly stupid to assume that he wouldn't discard the snow globe, even if he hadn't figured out how to forgive his wife or not?

Which brings us to the ending.  The film's ending is out-of-left-field.  The police have investigated Connie & Edward, and while she in particular is a suspect in the murder, there's nothing really tying her to Paul's actual death.  Apparently despite Edward's & Connie's fingerprints being in the apartment (proving they had been in Paul's home), they can't get their fingerprints to match them, and there's no body or murder weapon as far as the police are concerned so it's impossible to charge them (though a black light surely would have shown them that Paul had lost an immense amount of blood, and the lack of a body would indicate that he was murdered rather than suicide).  So why, exactly, after they reconcile & decide to have this terrible secret, does he seemingly turn himself into the police?  The logic here is mind-boggling, and the script gives us no hints as to the reason.

All of this is to say that Diane Lane getting a hit out of this movie is a surprise, and entirely resting on her shoulders.  Lane plays Connie as a complete woman, and one that cannot easily be pigeonholed.  She is a woman in her 40's who is still unbelievably gorgeous, a woman who clearly is living her life on autopilot.  You see that in the way she starts to give into Paul, at first tentatively, and then with a recklessness, showing in her relationship a passion she hasn't felt in years.  Even as the film continues, though, her ambivalence toward her old life never exactly tires-Lane plays her as someone who understands that what she has (her marriage, her wealth, her son) is something of value, but it's not something she particularly values.  That's smart acting, and a devotion to a character that the script really can't provide insight toward-she earned this Oscar nomination, and kudos to the Academy for finding this gem under so much garbage.