L'amore fatale

Out in the country for a nice picnic, Joe and Claire get involved in a ballooning accident that leads to the death of one of the men who came to help. Joe seems to get over it but he does obsess over whether or not he could have done more. This obsession is fed when he begins being stalked by one of the men who was also involved in the accident – Jed, who appears to believe that Joe and him are close and belong together as a result of what they shared. As Jed continues to get close, Joe appears to be coming apart, putting a great deal of strain on his relationship with Claire.

When I went to see this film I had no idea whatsoever what it was about and the first four minutes of the film had as much of an impact on me as I'm told the start of the book did. With the accident (that is frighteningly convincing) the seeds are sown for a film that is about love, mental health and about a sort of Fatal Attraction vibe. I use the last description with reservations because I don't think this is comparable to Fatal Attraction because this has so much more to it than just the bunny boiler stuff. Instead the story mixes it with Joe's own sanity crumbling at the same time as Claire's 'enduring love' for him is put to the test. I have not read the book, but for my money the film did this pretty well, producing plenty of good dialogue that meant the film was more about the character of Joe than it was about Jed. This is not say it is totally perfect because it isn't; the fatal attraction thing easily takes the focus meaning that some parts of the audience may feel that this is the whole ball game and that all the 'talking' is what gets in the way. For me, I felt the other way, the fatal attraction thing weakened the film when it is the focus and, for this reason, I didn't like the extra ending during the credits because I felt that the open ending had done fine on its own.

The writing is good but the film relies very heavily on the performances and, luckily they are all good where they need to be. Craig is fast becoming someone who is headed for big things, not only does he have the body of a star but he can really act too. Here he is a convincing 'normal' person and his initial polite bemusement by Jed is realistic, as his gradual descent into instability himself. Morton may have less time but she is equally convincing and realistic in showing that love always has limits everywhere except in the movies. Ifans is good even though he has the roles of the religious fanatic, mentally ill, homosexual stalker to deal with. Whether or not it was wise to link all those aspects or not is one matter but Ifans still does well – never really resorting to showboating or easy 'mad man' stuff. I wasn't totally won over by him because Craig was my focus, but he still did well. Support from Nighy, Lynch etc is OK but really they are minor roles and not anywhere near the centre of the film.

Overall this is a strange film and anyone who dismisses it as being a rip off of Fatal Attraction has totally missed the point. Instead the film looks at love, at sanity and relationship all in a well-written script that is well delivered by a couple of very good actors in the lead roles. Not to everyone's tastes then and not the easiest one to really put into a nutshell but interesting, moving and satisfyingly lacking in gloss throughout.

ENDURING LOVE (2004) *** Daniel Craig, Rhys Ifans, Samantha Morton, Bill Nighy, Rosie Michell. (Dir: Roger Michell) 'Fatal Attraction' gets a sex change …and then some.

Fate and love seemed to be intertwined and can lead to lethal consequences, if not life changing and that simply is what happens when one idyllic day a British couple in love go picnicking in a bucolic field where tragedy inexplicably occurs.

The couple, Joe and Claire (Craig and Morton), are basking in their happiness when out of nowhere a red, hot air balloon enters the nearby horizon threatening to crash or worse yet continue its flight with its precious cargo: a young boy apparently unchaperoned with four other men frantically in pursuit of its wake. Joe, hesitating to make sense of the insensible, finally joins the posse whereby all five manage to wrestle the basket to earth until a fateful gust of wind intrudes sending them all aloft with deadly results.

Amongst the aftermath where all but one survives including a scruffy looking loner named Jed (Ifans) who asks Joe to join him in a mournful prayer for deceased. Reluctantly obliging the stranger who has shared a truly traumatic event sets the course of the film into a helter skelter portrayal of love gone wrong amidst an uncommon bond.

Joe, an academic, is suddenly plagued by the odd Jed on a regular basis showing up unannounced with a request to speak to him resulting in Jed's immediate crush on him sending him into a state of anger, confusion and wrestling with the other dilemma he has harbored: wishing he was able to do more to save the man who perished in the accident. Joe cannot get this out of his system that he should have conceivably prevented an unnecessary death while Jed cannot get Joe out of his system in delusionally believing they were meant to meet under dire circumstances underscoring the prevalent unspoken desire to be with one another.

Joe also is making life difficult with his relationship with Claire, an artist who is very deep into her work and cannot deal with Joe's obsession and subsequently Jed's for that matter. What follows is a tale of mixed emotions, homoerotic overtones, the fear of intimacy, the knowledge of failing to stop an unstoppable nightmare and ultimately the amount of psychological damage one can endure in the name of love.

Director Michell - who helmed the diverse 'NOTTING HILL' and 'CHANGING LANES' – practically melds the two, an English romance with an action thriller in his adaptation of the novel by Ian McEwan by Joe Penhall – mixes the taut tension expertly, particularly in the calm before the storm and then into the eye of the hurricane in the opening sequence which sets the aftermath in motion.

Craig – best known as Paul Newman's f**k-up gangster spawn in 'ROAD TO PERDITION' – echoes Richard Harris with his craggy, middle-class good looks and slight brawn as Joe, allowing the shades of grey to immerse himself as the film progresses largely from his point of view in utter disbelief at that madness unspooling and Morton counter balances with just enough attitude and frankly seems to be playing the male role in the couple (i.e. the strong, fairly silent-to-the-point tolerance of her mate).

It is Ifans, best known as Hugh Grant's grotty flat mate from the aforementioned 'HILL', who surprises in making his sad, mild-mannered loner into a uniquely frightening force to be reckoned with not seen since Glenn Close's downward spiral of carnal obsession in 'FATAL ATTRACTION' which feels like a carbon copy of but holds itself on not being only a suspense thriller but a uniformly smart, adult drama. With its Hitchcockian undercurrents the film as a whole gets under one's psyche skin and nestles itself into our worst nightmares: unbridled love by an unwanted would-be love.

Enduring Love is complex psychologically, and treads grounds that attempt to expose the nature of post traumatic experience, and the important issue of obsession. There's a cruel irony here, as one man's obsession upon another man, an almost incomprehensible assault that must have its true source in mental illness (rather than the tragedy that binds these characters), in turn tragically becomes an obsession for the victim, as he struggles in vain to understand this unwanted attention in a most British and gentlemanly way. It exposes to a great extent just how vulnerable social conventions can be in the way Englishmen interact with each other. I found it interesting that this nightmare may have been mitigated had the victim's de facto/bed partner (another aspect of the swirling psychologies) been just a tad more supportive. Is that the feminine side of Englishness? Grow a backbone, you find the solution, you're the man? This is the sort of movie that Uni students could write papers on and discuss for hours. It was engrossing, to be sure, but I'm an Australian and thus docked it a couple of points for being infuriating. Part of the soundtrack has a beautiful classical, pastoral melody. Other parts, those of tightened tension, are more severe. I wondered if two composers were employed for this. At its core this movie has a huge heart, is a showcase for wonderful actors, is high quality, and surely must have been one of the best and most interesting movies of its year.

A freak balloon accident in the Oxfordshire countryside involving five men and a child results in the death of an Oxford GP. One of the men is a writer-teacher called Joe (Daniel Craig) who is obsessed with the fact that love may be a science and on top of that he is finding it hard to come to terms with what happened at the accident. This is causing tension between him and his sculptor girlfriend Claire (Samantha Morton) and the situation is worsened when he is contacted by one of the other men in the accident. The man is a loner called Jed (Rhys Ifans), a homosexual who believes that the accident was meant to bring him and Joe together and he begins stalking him wherever he goes with ultimately dangerous results.

ENDURING LOVE adapted from a novel by Ian McEwan is a long and complex thriller, but one that never fails to grip the audience with NOTTING HILL director Roger Michell skillfully blending the mixture of themes including Joe's obsessive theories about love (which are ultimately turned upside down), the impact of the stalking and how it affects the relationship between Claire and Joe and the latter's guilt about the accident. Michell is ably assisted by a first rate cast including Daniel Craig as Joe who was brilliant in this year's British gangster blockbuster LAYER CAKE and Rhys Ifans from NOTTING HILL is splendid as the gay stalker. Samantha Morton also deserves praise as Joe's lover and it is sad to know that ENDURING LOVE isn't likely to find an audience beyond the art-houses. It is well above the quality of some of the hopelessly pretentious offerings our country has turned out in recent years like TRAUMA and THE RATCATCHER.

The great music score, cinematography and acting makes it good, if not great. Great is tough to reach, and much like the balloon in the story it goes too high and slips out of our grasp. Ian Mcewan has written excellent novels, Atonement being a highlight, but this one just tries to achieve too much and doesn't have the meat in the characters to back it up. However, it does make you think, and sometimes squirm with its observations and insights. I saw this as more an existentialist drama than a thriller, though the Hollywood crazy stalker plot point was probably enlarged to keep it entertaining, but it was the quieter and more introspective moments that caught my interest. Daniel Craig does a terrific job of playing a man obsessed with looking for a seemingly impossible to find answer to the mysteries of the randomness of life and death. Rhys Ifans plays the truly unique character and his creepy viewpoint makes you shift in your seat. It's consistently engaging but never a masterpiece, it's takes the loud and angry showdown rather than the quiet thinking that made it work to start. Will still make you never look at a hot air balloon the same way again.