Nina Takes a Lover

The more I see of Laura San Giancomo, the more I like her. She was excellent in "Pretty Woman" and her presence was powerful. I'm sure her real personality comes through when she acts. All of the actors were excellent in this movie, and believable. Wouldn't married life be more fun if we could throw away the boring side, and create new characters every now and then? Instead of a husband going out to create a fantasy, it's all there under his own roof. Be who you want to be at any time, not just on Halloween :-) although it would probably be considered an abnormal state of affairs ... then again, from what we see today at the movies or on TV, maybe it would be accepted. For sure, watching this movie would make you want to try when you see the end results. I enjoyed every minute of it. The TV guide only had two and a half stars against it. I would have given it four!!!

Laura San Giacomo has a husband who's always away on business and it makes her a sad person. She has a meet-obnoxious with photographer Paul Rhys and they start an affair.

This is a terrible movie. Nobody in it has any discernibly human traits, so none of the dialogue sounds like things that real people would say ... and it's all dialogue. Giacomo and Rhys prattle on endlessly in scene after scene after scene.

Full disclosure: The film has a huge twist which caught me totally off-guard. In retrospect, it should have been obvious, but since little about the film made any sense, I assumed that the twist-related details that didn't add up were just part of all the other details that didn't add up. Anyway, the film manages to do nothing of any interest with the twist once it drops.

Nobody in the film is good, but I don't really blame them. At times it reminded me of "The Room", but with better actors and basically competent filmmaking. It's kind of a testament to Giacomo that she can do anything with this.

Michael O'Keefe has a totally irrelevant part that involves sitting in a chair and nodding a lot. Fisher Stevens is about as miscast as it's possible to be as a studly barista.

With all due respect to the other reviewers here, I feel compelled to disagree completely & whole heartedly on their view of this movie. I'd also love to have some of whatever they were smoking which made this movie so stellar for them. I would point out to those considering watching it that the average is 5.3 stars and in my opinion, that is generous. The script is slow, the dialogue juvenile & tacky and, while the actors do their best with it, the performances are most definitely lacking.

If you want a "realistic" feeling movie about infidelity, try "Unfaithful" with Diane Lane and Olivier Martinez. Well written, spectacularly acted & far closer to real than "Nina Takes a Lover."

This is a quiet, scenic film set in the mellow San Francisco of the early 90's, with a pair of convincing & attractive lead actors. You could almost enjoy watching it on that basis alone. When the movie starts, Nina's husband has left town on business and the story unfolds as Nina meets and begins hooking up with a new lover. There's surprisingly little drama considering the subject matter, and the movie gets downright sluggish in parts. This film isn't really an exploration of the thorniness of extramarital affairs - for that you can watch "Unfaithful." Still, there's some food for thought as well as a few really touching scenes. San Giacomo and Rhys are both good actors and manage to keep things interesting.

Though the movie was somewhat slow and Rhys never got a name- only the "photographer" this was a pleasant movie to watch on a weekend evening with a glass of sherry. San Giacomo is a very attractive woman and carried off the part nicely. Fisher Stevens added to the sleaze factor of it all. What I liked was the romance evolved and didn't go straight into sex scenes. A believable film about two people who are attracted to each other and because both spouses are gone- follow their hearts- though they are breaking vows.