Ralph Fiennes plays the smolderingly yearning Maurice Bendrix, who's desperate to re-ignite his affair with Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore) despite his friendship with her sad-sack husband Henry, played by mopey Stephen Rea. Fiennes has the Jeremy Irons romantically tortured intellectual thing down pat, and he perfectly captures the bitter, dispassionately cruel mien of a spurned lover. This role is a lot like the one he played in The English Patient -- Maurice's love for Sarah consumes his whole life and is as often tormenting and painful as it is rapturous -- and Fiennes is as romantic, sexy, and heart-wrenching in this movie as he was in Patient. Rea, too, is good despite his limiting and unshowy role, but Moore is bland and uninspired.
Director Neil Jordan generally does a good job, fluidly slipping between the present and the past to follow Maurice's thoughts. He makes a few missteps, though, that weaken the understated blend of bitterness and romance by over-simplifying and coarsening the emotions. The unspoken sexual tension between Fiennes and Moore and their first passionate kiss are so eloquent and so reminiscent of classic movies that it seems especially crass when the camera pans down to show Fiennes' bare ass pumping away between Moore's legs. Not that I object to Ralph Fiennes' ass in principle; it just seems inappropriate here. And Sarah's illness is a heavy-handed plot device that feels cheap and wrong.
I'd say that this is a great date movie, but how would I know? It will certainly strike a chord with anyone who's ever had an affair end sooner than she or he wanted (I mean other people, of course, because I certainly wouldn't know what that feels like, nope, not at all, not me). Um... okay, I have to go be bitter somewhere now. Anyway, I recommend the movie.
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