Marcas da Vingança

There is a mystery at the heart of Forever Mine, the most recent downturn in writer-director Paul Schrader's roller coaster of a career. The mystery involves a man in the first class section of an airplane to New York, circa 1987. The man looks a little bit like Joseph Fiennes, but he is wearing a goofy make-up job to imply scarring and he is speaking with a goofy accent to add intrigue. And thus the mystery can be summed up with a series of questions: Who? Who is this man? What? What is he going to New York to do, dressed as a drug dealer? And Why? Why would anybody cast Joseph Fiennes for a part that required acting? Sure, Fiennes is perfectly skilled at looking soulful, but anything beyond that -- accent, characterization, etc -- is out of his range.

We cut quickly from the plane to "14 years earlier" where we see Fiennes again, now much younger. We know he's younger because he isn't scarred and he doesn't have a goatee. He also isn't speaking with a thick Cuban accent anymore. He has a strange accent that waffles between British, "American," and "Latino." Fiennes is Alan, a cabana boy at a Miami resort. His friend Javier is trying to convince him that he should enter the drug game to make some real money. But Alan has clearly seen DePalma's Scarface, Blow, and a number of other drug movies and he has more legitimate dreams, starting, apparently, with bedding the wife (Gretchen Mol) of a New York businessman (Ray Liotta). Alan and the wife, Ella, begin perhaps the most public affair in cinema history. They make out down the beach from her husband, they get all kissy at local bars, and then have emotional conversations outside her hotel room. And the husband doesn't find out. But then it's time for the couple leave, but soulful Fiennes cannot let Ella go. We're not really sure why, though. As a character, she's a total cypher. Schrader gives her one or two expositional confessional moments, but that's about it.

So of course the relationship is at least temporarily doomed. But in Schrader's universe we knew that before Alan and Ella even kissed, because we know that she's Catholic and that guilt and morality will quickly come into play. As with several other Schrader works, religious fervor is the central plot device, which leads to Alan's deformity, Ella's regret, and the film's film act.

Beyond the Catholicism, though, there's not much at stake in Forever Mine. The two leads have minimal chemistry and the film is plagued by constant continuity errors and cliched plotting. I was troubled by the fact that the 14 years between the flashback and the framing device had done nothing to age any of characters. And I was perplexed by the fact that even though Alan's friend Javier starts out as the the man with the connections, he ends up as a glorified servant. I didn't understand why Schrader couldn't be bothered to develop either Ella's character or that of her husband. And I was just annoyed by Fiennes's inconsistantcy as an actor.

Schrader seems to be having fun with his own background and the backgrounds of his actors. There appear to be obvious references to Goodfellas and Taxi Driver, while Fiennes's 1987 persona has a strange similarity to Robert DeNiro. And all of the elements seemed to have been in place for a fine film. This was Schrader's follow-up to the minor masterpiece Affliction and Fiennes's follow-up to Shakespeare in Love. It was also Mol's first starring role after Vanity Fair jumped the gun and made her an "It" Girl shortly before the release of several small parts. But really nothing comes together. Schrader plots an affair without any twists or originality beside the Catholic guilt that have always fueled his violent Graham Greene-esque visions. The political context that justifies the period setting is hardly worth the effort. The drug subplot goes nowhere. And when Ella sits reading Madame Bovary to a group of senior citizens, the symbolism is just infantile.

Forever Mine never was released in theaters because the company producing it went under. It premiered on Starz! and moved to video. It's hard to imagine it having any real box office potential under any circumstances. This film is a 3/10 at best.

I watched this film at the Torun camerimage festival in Poland.The whole audience was in stitches, which would have been fine except this was supposed to be a romance. How a renowned scriptwriter like Paul Schrader managed to come up with such bunkum is unfathomable! Watching it reminded me of the scene in Singing in the Rain, where the audience is in uproar at the unsynchronised sound. The whole experience was surreal! I promise you, you won't see a bigger turkey than this all year - Ed Wood would have been proud of it!

Great movie -albeit, not too original. Good acting -let's say I was pretty well content with the actors and they're portrayals of the characters. An old story with an different twist -or maybe twists that seriously remind of a bunch of different movies. But you figure, 'Hey, it's going to have a unique and blow-your-mind kind of an ending,' right? WRONG! In fact, I'm still waiting for the ending to happen. It's been hours and the DVD is still in the thing, just playin'. I waited through ALL the credits, hoping that some kind of 'sneaky' ending would come, and NADA! It's like they just ran out of film or something. But, hell, I'd forgo any or all of the credits just to see how this frickin' story ends. PLEASE! thank you -7 out of 10- if anybody cares. I doubt my opinion matters, but this COULD have been 10 out of 10 with SOME (just a modicum) of closure. Maybe even 'the end'. At the end.

the end

Not a bad film, but by no means a good one either. Alan, a cabana boy at a Miami resort, meets and falls in love with Ella, a pretty, young trophy wife to Mark, a businessman. Mark is not happy when Ella discloses her affair with Alan to him, and....you can guess the rest. Predictable, by-the-numbers stuff without even any engaging performances. Joseph Fiennes is just miscast, plain and simple. He moves as though he has something rather large stuck you-know-where and his American accent, moreso than his Spanish accent, is just unconvincing. I like Joseph Fiennes plenty, but I did not buy him as the romantic, heart-throb his character was intended to be. Ray Liotta, on the other hand, is simply walking through his role, shades of 'GoodFellas' all over the place. Gretchen Mol, however, could carve out a nice little niche for herself playing the B-grade Drew Barrymore-Kim Basinger-Ashley Judd, when those stars are unavailable, uninterested or too expensive. She's got the girlish charm and bubbly giggle of Barrymore, the air-brushed good looks of Basinger, and the All-American beauty of Judd...and she's not afraid to get naked on screen, as evidenced here many times.

As for the rest of the movie, Paul Schrader's script is lazy and dull, full of lines that a third grader could've wrote. Too bad because Mr. Schrader has the film noir-ish tone down pat and the photography is great to look at. There's just nothing to occupy the space. We've seen all this before ('Body Heat' comes to mind as well as a slew of others) where this conventional set-up has clicked and provided for some tasty entertainment, but it does not do so here and the result is so-so. Oh, and the ending sucks. Skip it.

"Forever Mine" is a somewhat flawed telling of an interesting and unpredictable love triangle story which is built around a solid core cast of under-rated actors (Fiennes, Mol, and Liotta). The film, which takes place over 17 years during which a Florida cabana boy struggles with an evil politician for possession of his wife, begins as a romantic melodrama and turns into a darkly obsessive war of wills. "Forever Mine" suffers from low budget appurtenances (music, sets, props, etc); an uneven flow which runs in the beginning and crawls through the middle; and an unnecessary murder which serves little purpose; etc. Those who can overlook the ragged edges of the film will be rewarded by some excellent performances and an evocative and compelling drama while, as the extremes of IMDB.com's users' perspectives indicate, the more analytical viewers will react quite the opposite. An earnest and interesting love it or hate it sleeper.