Fatale

Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche do some "Damage" in this 1992 film also starring Miranda Richardson, Rupert Graves, Ian Bannen and Leslie Caron. Irons is a British cabinet minister who falls for his son's girlfriend (Binoche), a deeply disturbed young woman.

Despite the facetiousness of my summary line, this is quite a brilliant film about emotionally damaged people and obsession. It also comes off as very realistic because the emotions are portrayed so honestly.

On the surface, it seems ridiculous, sort of a sex-change version of The Graduate, with Binoche involved with both father and son. Here is the Irons character, Dr. Stephen Fleming, with a brilliant career, a beautiful wife (Richardson) whose father (Bannen) has had a brilliant career; they have two children and a lovely home and lifestyle. Why threaten it with a tawdry affair?

I kept thinking what an idiot Irons was throughout the film, yet we know that in real life, people have played Russian roulette with their careers before.

It's clear when Anna seeks out Stephen and introduces herself that her attachment to Martyn (Graves) was simply to get to him - and she does -immediately. All they can do is stare at one another.

When she invites him to her apartment, she is sitting on the edge of her bed. Seeing him, she sinks to the floor, her arms outstretched. Because she never wears underwear, they can usually have sex with most of their clothes on and have it anywhere - street corners, tables, Stephen's father-in-law's house. The sex isn't particularly erotic to watch; it's awkward-looking because of the frenzy involved.

Part of the obsession for Stephen is the unleashing of passion that's been sublimated; part of it is the danger - and is part of it having something he didn't have in his own youth that his son has now? Does he look at Martyn and see that Martyn's life is ahead of him and that he, Stephen, is no longer "young?" Possible. Is he angry with Martyn for replacing him in his wife's affections? Perhaps.

For Anna, the motives and thrills are different - due to a tragedy in her life involving her brother who apparently was in love with her too, she is playing some weird psychological game in which there is no real winner.

The acting is marvelous - Binoche is exquisitely dressed though some of those marvelous clothes are ripped off of her - she brings an exotic, androgynous and mysterious quality to the role of Anna. Irons is excellent as an up-tight father and half-crazed lover.

Leslie Caron has a small role as Anna's mother. She's lovely as ever and strong in a dramatic role of a woman who drinks a little but who nevertheless has Stephen's number.

The last 30 minutes of this movie are some of the most shattering moments in film, and what makes them so shattering is not only the situation but the absolutely devastating, visceral, no holds barred performance by Miranda Richardson. She is ably supported by a writer and director who both knew something about profound pain.

Her performance is great - that she had the material to give that performance and a director who let her go makes this film truly unforgettable.

When Damage is over, you won't be the person you were when you started watching it. It's so rare nowadays to see such a fascinating, character-driven film. It will stay with you for a long time.

I don't know. I have read some of the reviews here and some literate folk seem to me to want to wax lyrical about vapor. Meaning, sometimes people get a kick out of writing silly things.

If this is the worse movie anyone has seen, then they've not seen many movies. I'm not saying it is for everyone, it's a long key affair, where everything is below the surface (which is actually referenced in the film over a dinner table scene) until finally it breaks free with horrendous results.

Four great performances, Irons is brilliant as a man with great self-control who finds himself for the first time ever, obsessed. Richardson who nearly steals the entire film with a single scene near the end - writing years of personal grief across her face in bruises. Binoche who knows where safe harbor lies (with Peter) who cannot avoid destroying peoples lives. Graves as the ineffectual son, who knows he's in love with a woman in pain, but does not yet know how it will manifest itself.

It's a good film. Beware of anyone who goes to extremes to say otherwise. It's not an easy film to ridicule. (ps. I watched the R2 DVD, it's an awful presentation - AVOID).

What I find interesting about the prior reviewer is that he could only comment upon the sleaziness of the Jeremy Irons characters. I fully expected to see that in most reviews. It is also most unbalanced, in the manner of the sex role ideologies of the 90's and the oughts.

For any not submerged in feminist victimization ideology, or an exaggerated gallantry, but who can view the situation with a modicum of gender neutrality, the Binoche character is far more culpable than the Irons character. She is no ingenue. Her character must be around 30, and a very worldly 30 plus at that (although she looks 35 plus) -- to his perhaps 45. She plots from moment one to seduce her boyfriend's father, not long after she has hooked up with the boyfriend. She does succeed soon enough, which does him no credit. But he believes she is just one more of a long line of his son's very temporary, and not particularly involved sexual relationships -- and he exudes an obviously sexual loneliness. The Irons and Binoche characters have a very torrid, and mildly S&M, relationship. All along he is obviously conflicted and very uncomfortable that she continue the relationship with both of them. Midway, he wants to leave his wife, make an honest (if marriage destroying) breast of it, and be with her alone. Binoche wants no such thing. She wants both father and son.

What is really maximally warped is Brioche's continued pursuit of the father after the son has proposed marriage, after she has accepted, and after Irons tells her with obvious anguish, but apparent sincerity, that he has decided that he has to break it off, and is breaking it off. It is not a mixed message. He even makes a non-revelatory, but symbolic and emotionally communicative visit to his son in his new, early achieved job as assistant political editor at a tony London newspaper. But Brioche relentlessly pursues him, and lures him back again -- while she is in the midst of planning the wedding.

Further, she spares not a single thought for his public career -- despite the fact that he is a British cabinet minister - or perhaps it is an assistant minister. (She works in a high end antiques establishment).

Sure, she has her troubled childhood history. But even there it isn't clear whether she is more victim, or manipulator. Certainly she was not the most ultimate victim earlier, either. As well, the Irons character, for all his public success, also obviously has emotional issues. They are familiar ones -- a reasonably pleasant, but passionless marriage, a midlife crisis, and a general sense, reflected by his children, that his greatest failing in life is not letting himself go more, not living with more passion. He at least makes some efforts to control himself, and to distance himself after her intentions to commit herself (at least publicly) to his son become clear -- while she does not -- at all.

He of course ends up far more damaged by her than the other way around. She it would seem entered damaged, and left with the pattern just more confirmed.

And yet as I expected, and have so far seen, the currently prevailing impulse is to almost exclusively blame the He -- regardless. Hogwash. Brioche is the ultimate home wrecker.

There's a fine line between passion and pain, and no one does either of them better than Jeremy Irons. Obsession is the bottom line here, and anyone who's been there can relate. Nothing else matters, and in this movie, Irons crosses all the lines. His first introduction to Binoche...their first rendezvous...their last ...these are engraved in my memory. Sure rich and beautiful people populate this movie, but the emotional punch it packs is one hundred percent REAL. Miranda Richardson, as the grieving mother, couldn't be better. The haunting photographic image near the end of the movie hit me very hard. A deserted island? And only one movie? Damage. Damage. Damage.

I'm mainly posting this because I've been reading the other comments here, and I just had to respond. While a movie's quality is (for the most part) subjective and everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, I must say that those who thoroughly panned this movie have really demonstrated how little imagination most people have, and their lack of appreciation for subtlety in film or any other artistic medium is readily apparent.

For all the talk about the sex scenes in this movie and how they're laughable, or not erotic or whatever, no one is getting the point: the sex between Irons and Binoche is not there just to get the audience all hot and bothered. You have to look at it within the context of the story: these two people are not just out to get laid, to satisfy some momentary sexual whim. They didn't say, Oh, hey, you look hot, I'd sure like to bang you. From the moment they meet they are both captive to an overwhelming, inexplicable passion, due to deep-seated, subconscious motivations stemming from each person's individual history and emotional nature. It's fairly clear from the mostly silent, often awkward, and sometimes almost painful-looking sex that they are not in it for the sheer physical sensation, or even to show affection/love for each other. They simply can't help themselves. Through sex with each other they appear to be working out their own individual pain, a sense of loss or longing for something they are unable to express any other way, and the physical act is almost incidental. Whether they betray or hurt anyone else is beside the point. Each is damaged, and this is how they attempt to repair that damage, but it's a hopeless cause. This is why the sex comes off for the most part as passionless, futile, and far from pleasurable. These are not happy, normal people--they cannot experience much real pleasure the way the average person does. The sex, in service to the story and the characters, is portrayed just as it should be.

'Damage' a terrible film with bad acting? Nonsense. Even if you don't like it, i.e., it's just not to your taste, it's really impossible to deny that this movie is well done in every respect, and when it comes down to it, that is the only real criterion for judging the merit of any work of art. Did all the elements of the movie work to get across what the filmmaker was trying to do? Absolutely. Most people seem to be judging this movie based on their own petty, immature biases developed over years of watching empty, brainless, formula movies: do I like this actor's voice or looks; am I turned on by this actress's body; are these people and the things they do and say close enough to my own ideas about what people are like and how they should behave; does this movie let me remain in my safe, shallow, ignorant bubble of conformity and enjoy my microwave popcorn on the couch? I'm also amazed when people talk about how there are no characters to 'like' in a movie. Who cares? This should not be the point of any work of art. Life does not always present us with likable people, and neither does art. Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche and Miranda Richardson are all superb. Richardson's intensity is mesmerizing, and Irons and Binoche communicate incredible depths to each other and the audience with the smallest gesture or a seemingly pedestrian line, proving that less is almost always more. Watch Irons early on as he portrays his character's quiet sense of desperation and yearning to break out of his comfortable but dead existence, as though all his life he's been out of place, wondering how he got there but unable to articulate it. Binoche has few lines most of the time but doesn't need them: she shows convincingly with her face and movements an entire world of desolation and pain in Anna, along with the fierce drive she carries to maintain some semblance of hope in her life. This is all also due of course to the script and the direction. Besides all this it's also an incredibly stylish and gorgeous movie to look at. I don't know how anyone with any imagination or perceptiveness could find this movie boring or badly done. All in all, I highly recommend this film for a mature, sensitive, and powerful look at human relations and behavior. It's almost mythic in its ability to convey a sense of inevitability and emotional devastation. Brilliant, and hard to forget.