Truth and consequences
Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful is more graphic in its portrayal of the act, but it comes no closer than most recent films to confronting the issues surrounding adultery. Once again, it is the physical activity, not the consequences, that gets most of the attention. Unfaithful starts out horribly and ends on equally shaky ground, with only an involving second act helping to prop it up.
The film centers on the Sumner family, which lives in a ritzy suburb of New York City. Husband Edward (Richard Gere) runs a successful armored car business, while his younger wife, Connie (Diane Lane), spends her days taking care of social activities and school events revolving around their eight-year- old, Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan).They appear to be a happy-enough family, but we know that something is amiss right off the bat as Connie starts the day amid a heavy windstorm (the winds of passion and all that--Lyne's approach is not subtle).
This ill-wind blows the high-heeled Connie to the ground when she's in SoHo that afternoon, and later into the arms of Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez), a hunky book seller who starts licking his chops the moment he spots the wounded Connie. The fact that they meet-cute by running into each other as Paul is carrying a stack of books (the oldest cliché in screenwriting) suggests that writers Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr., who have done far better work, are already grasping for straws. The initial seduction scenes are also clichéd, with lots of heavy breathing and poetry reading, as Paul zeroes in on his prey, a passionate woman who seems to be searching for something missing in her cozy and outwardly satisfying suburban life.
