La fin d'une liaison

This is an engrossing tale of love, passion and betrayal invloving three star-crossed lovers. Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) is a man haunted by jealousy and pain over an affair he had with the wife of one of his friends, Henry Miles (Stephen Rea). The affair has been over for two years when a chance encounter with Miles takes Bendrix to his house where he once again encounters Sarah (Julianne Moore). The obsession for her returns when Henry tells him that he suspects that Sarah is having an affair. At hearing this Maurice gets jealous, thinking that he has been replaced as her paramour. What follows is a complex and tangled web of suspicion, jealousy and dolor.

This is a wonderfully complicated story that opens slowly like a flower. It is a first person narrative delivered by Bendrix and it gets more intriguing as the film progresses. The use of flashbacks is subtlety effective, where the realizations about misinterpretations come not from the dialogue, but from seeing the same scene from two perspectives. The love scenes are sensuously done and the general tone of the film is poignant and sensitive.

The film was nicely photographed with various filters to give it an old feel without losing the richness. Director Neil Jordan did a fine job of giving the film a genuine look of the period with proper English costumes from the 1940's.

Ralph Fiennes was excellent as the jealous lover. He played the character as civilized and staid with molten lava just beneath the surface. He was masterful at conveying strong emotion with a sideways glance or hand gesture without losing his composure.

Julianne Moore has added another fabulous dramatic performance to her resume as Sarah. She played the part with fatalistic passion, victimized by vortex of events she felt powerless to control.

Stephen Rea also shined as the impassive cuckold. Rea tends to be very understated in his portrayals, often too much so. But he was the perfect choice for the hapless Miles; so intellectual, withdrawn and defenseless. His phlegmatic response upon being confronted by Bendrix about their affair, showed a resigned helplessness that was both pathetic and believable.

I enjoyed this film immensely and gave it a 9/10. It is finespun yet powerful. It takes its time unfolding, so if you like pace this film might test your patience. But if you enjoy a good old fashioned steamy love triangle, this film will do nicely.

Look at the comments on this site. There's pretty much a perfect split between people who think the film is unrelentingly dull with no redeeming features, and people who think the film is an amazing achievement. I fall into the latter category, and can't for the life of me figure out the former.

This is not an action film. There is no violence. There are no thrills, chills, spills, or anything along those lines. There are three terrific characters, there is an amazingly romantic relationship, and there are superb performances. There is a wonderful director who keeps everything tightly reigned in. There is nothing superfluous in this film. It is perfect.

Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) is a novelist who meets beautiful Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore) at a party hosted by her husband Henry (Stephen Rea), whom Bendrix is researching for a book. In no time at all, Sarah and Maurice begin a tempestuous and passionate affair which continues through World War II, until Sarah breaks it off suddenly after an air raid which nearly took Bendrix's life. A chance encounter with Henry two years later brings Bendrix and Sarah together again, and they rekindle their affair as the truth about that air raid is revealed.

A nice enough story on its own. But what makes this film great is the approach that Jordan takes (or perhaps it's not his approach... I'm not familiar with either the novel by Graham Greene or the 1955 film). The opening line of the film is typed by Bendrix onto a clean sheet of paper: "This is a diary of hate." It is only at the end of the film that the viewer understands who it is that Bendrix hates, and why. The story is a dramatization of what Bendrix is writing.

First, he tells us about 1946, when he just happened to see Henry walking in the rain. It's this moment that opens the door for Bendrix, and for us, into his own past. Then Bendrix proceeds to interweave his recent experiences of 1946 with events that transpired during the War. That gives us three distinct time frames for the film, which are introduced to the viewer in reverse chronological order.

Also, it is useful to remember that everything we see on screen (with the exception of several scenes of Bendrix typing away) is a depiction of what Bendrix writes. The entire film is told from Bendrix's point-of -view. This allows us two things: 1) more intimate access to the inner workings of such a fascinating character, and 2) it allows us to enjoy the mystery element of the story much more. If you'll notice, all of the best mysteries tend to have single-character POVs. Look at Chinatown, or The Maltese Falcon. Splitting the POV tends to give audiences information which they should not get before the main character does.

Not that this film is a mystery. There is a mystery in it, which is central to the plot and to Bendrix's situation, but I wouldn't call the film itself a mystery.

What makes this film great is its understatement. It is a very English film, and the characters and performances are all very English. Emotions are fiercely felt but subtly expressed. That makes it highly demanding of its audience, but even more rewarding. It also explains why so many call the film boring. Sarah was described as an ice queen in one review here, and Bendrix was called shallow. Like most reviews (including this one), those comments say a lot more about the people who wrote them then they do about their purported subject. Sarah is intensely passionate, Bendrix is a layered and complex character.

So, not for all tastes, but a brilliant film. Better than any and all of the Best Picture noms of 1999.

As so often, I haven't yet read the novel this movie was based on. So again, you can't expect from me that I make a comparison between the two. But even if I had read the book I don't think I would have talked about it, because this doesn't honor the many work and inspiration that the director has put in it. It's not because he uses an existing story, that what he does with it, has to be completely the same...

Even though the largest part of the story is situated during the Second World War, it doesn't start there. We first meet the novelist Maurice Bendrix and Henry Miles, the husband of his ex-mistress Sarah, on a rainy night in London in 1946. For a reason we don't know yet, the affair between Bendrix and Sarah was abruptly ended by her, two years before, and since then they hadn't seen each other. Now Bendrix's obsession with Sarah immediately gets a new spark and out of jealousy he arranges to have her followed. That's when we learn the reason for their separation. During a bombing raid, Sarah made a bargain with God. She would sacrifice their relationship in exchange for Bendrix's life. He survived and that's why she didn't want to see him anymore. But when he reappears, she soon realizes that it will be very difficult to keep her promise to God...

When you hear in the trailer that Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore are magic together, you might believe that this is just some nice promo talk, only intended for making you buy the DVD. But for once they really didn't exaggerate. Together they lifted this movie to a higher level, although it must be said that Stephen Rea did a very fine job too. The fact that they had a very good and well-written script to work with, must have helped them too of course. Some were not pleased with what they called a couple of 'soft-porn scenes' but personally I didn't have a problem with that at all. In my opinion this only added to the rawness of the emotions.

Some will also say that this is an incredibly boring movie. Well, if you don't like or are not used to watching a movie without big action scenes, than this is absolutely true. If you are such a person, than you better leave it alone and choose something else. But when you like to see a quality product (and no I'm not going to use the title 'art'-movie because I hate that name and this certainly isn't such a movie), with believable emotions, a great story and some excellent acting performances, than this might be a movie that you definitely should give a try. I really liked what I saw and that's why I give it a 7.5/10 at least, maybe even an 8/10.

Love and the spiritual (i.e. inner) life have rarely been better portrayed! Graham Greene's novel has been translated to cinematic imagery with an almost religious devotion. It isn't easy to make profound and meaningful experience so immediate and felt as this film does. Watching it on video...a second viewing...I was even more deeply moved than the first time around.

Julianne Moore, very much on the big screen these days (and for good reason), gives another of her splendid performances, this time as Sarah Miles, a middle-class English woman, married to a good, but dull man who takes her for granted. Her encounter with Maurice Bendrix (played to a T by the consummate actor, Ralph Fiennes) is electric and sets in motion an affair of deep consequence...for all three people involved. Stephan Rea as Henry Miles, Sarah's husband, trapped in his desire, but inability to fulfill the emotional and sexual needs of his much-loved wife, is another convincing and touching portrayal.

The spiritual aspects expressed in the film, reflect the life-long struggle of Grahame between his Catholicism and his doubts. The deep pulls of each character toward both personal and impersonal love give the film a dimension and an honesty that reward the "participant" (for that's how potent the film is) with an indelible human experience.

To Neil Jordan, the director, my wholehearted gratitude for his sensitive, nuanced presentation of this beautiful film.

One of the great joys in movie watching lies in stumbling across films that, by their very nature, should be nothing more than clichéd, hackneyed versions of stories we have seen a thousand times before yet, somehow, through the insightfulness of their creators, manage to illuminate those tales in ways that are wholly new and unexpected. Such is the case with Neil Jordan's `The End of the Affair,' a film that in its bare boned outlining would promise to be nothing more than a conventional, three-handkerchief weepie centered around the hoary issue of romantic infidelity, but which emerges, instead, as a beautiful and moving meditation on the overwhelming force jealousy, love, commitment and passion can exert on our lives.

Ralph Fiennes stars as Maurice Bendrix, a British writer living in 1940's London, who has an affair with Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore), the wife of Maurice's friend, Henry (Stephen Rea). Based on a Graham Greene novel, the film achieves far greater intellectual and emotional depth than this skeletal outline would indicate. Part of the success rests in the fact that both the original author and the adapter, writer/director Neil Jordan, have devised a multi-level scenario that utilizes a number of narrative techniques as the means of revealing crucial information to the audience regarding both the plot and the characters. For instance, the film travels fluidly back and forth in time, spanning the decade of the 1940's, from the initial meeting between Bendrix and Sarah in 1939, through the horrendous bombings of London during World War II to the `present' time of the post-war British world. This allows the authors to reveal the details of the affair slowly, enhanced by the even more striking technique of having the events viewed from the entirely different viewpoints of the two main characters involved. `Rashomon' – like, we first see the affair through the prism of Bendrix's limited perspective, only to discover, after he has confiscated Sarah's diary, that he (and consequently we) have been utterly mistaken as to the personal attributes and moral quality of Sarah all along. Thus, as an added irony, Bendrix discovers that he has been obsessing over a woman he `loves' but, in reality, knows little about.

The authors also enhance the depth of the story through their examination of TWO men struggling with their overwhelming jealousy for the same woman and the complex inter-relationships that are set up as a result. In fact, the chief distinction of this film is the way it manages to lay bare the souls of all three of these fascinating characters, making them complex, enigmatic and three-dimensional human beings with which, in their universality, we can all identify. Bendrix struggles with his raging romantic passions, his obsessive jealousy for the woman he can't possess and his lack of belief in God, the last of which faces its ultimate challenge at the end. Sarah struggles with the lack of passion she finds in the man she has married but cannot love as more than a friend, juxtaposed to the intense love she feels for this man she knows she can never fully have. In addition, she finds herself strangely faithful, if not to the two men in her life, at least to two crucial commitments (one to her wedding vows and one to God) yet unable to fully understand why. Henry struggles with his inadequacies as a lover and the strange possessiveness that nevertheless holds sway over him. Even the minor characters are fascinating. Particularly intriguing is the private investigator who becomes strangely enmeshed in the entire business as both Bendrix and Henry set him out to record Sarah's activities and whereabouts, a man full of compassion for the people whom he is, by the nature of his profession, supposed to view from a position of coldhearted objectivity. (One plot flaw does, however, show up here: why would this man, whose job it is to spy on unsuspecting people for his clients, employ a boy to help him who sports a very distinctive birthmark on one side of his face?).

`The End of the Affair' would not be the noteworthy triumph it is without the stellar, subtly nuanced performances of its three main stars. In addition, as director, Jordan, especially in the second half, achieves a lyricism rare in modern filmmaking. Through a fluidly gliding camera and a mesmerizing musical score, Jordan lifts the film almost to the level of cinematic poetry as we sit transfixed by the emotional richness and romantic purity of the experience. `The End of the Affair' takes its place alongside `Brief Encounter' and `Two For the Road' as one of the very best studies of a romantic relationship ever put on film.