Product Description

In post-WWII England, an American writer hires a private detective to learn why his mistress ended their adulterous affair so abruptly.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 1-MAR-2005
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5439 in DVD
• Brand: FIENNES,RALPH
• Released on: 2000-05-16
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 101 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
"This is a diary of hate," pounds out novelist Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) on his typewriter as he recounts the lost love of his life in this spiritual memoir (based on Graham Greene's novel) with a startling twist. It's London 1946, and Maurice runs into his achingly dull school friend Henry (Stephen Rea with a perpetually gloomy hangdog expression). Their meeting is brittle, all small talk and chilly, mannered civility beautifully captured by director-screenwriter Neil Jordan (The Crying Game), and it only barely thaws when Henry suggests that his wife, Sarah (the luminous Julianne Moore), may be having an affair. Maurice's mind reels back to his passionate affair with Sarah during the war years, which she abruptly broke off two years ago. Gripped with a jealousy that hasn't abated, he hires a private detective (a mousy, marvelous Ian Hart) to shadow her movements. He prepares himself for the revelation of a rival but instead finds a deeper, more profound secret: "I tempted fate," she writes in her diary, "and fate accepted."

Jordan's cool remove captures the unease beneath formal manners but never warms into intimacy during the scenes between the lovers, even while Fiennes and Moore almost explode in repressed emotions, their faces cracking under their masks of civility and their resolve shaking through jittery body language. There's more thought than feeling behind this collision of passion and spirituality, but it's a sincere, richly realized portrait of ennui and rage against God energized by brief moments of shattering drama. --Sean Axmaker

From The New Yorker
Adultery during the blitz, with rain and gray ash everywhere and buildings falling down around the furtive lovers. Neil Jordan's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel "The End of the Affair" is suitably intense and sombre. The picture has an arrowlike swiftness and seriousness, and a good part of Greene's bracing candor comes through. But Greene's story, by its very nature, cannot explode into dramatic life on the screen. The principal players are the writer Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes), a stand-in for Greene himself; a married woman, Sarah (Julianne Moore); and God, who is ever so hard to cast. Bendrix addresses Him, with elaborate loathing, and Sarah needs Him, but exactly what faith means to her is a mystery. The movie is constructed like a puzzle with a metaphysical solution-it's intelligent but muffled and slightly remote. Stephen Rea gives an abashed, beautiful performance as the cuckolded husband, and Ian Hart is the Dickensian detective who spies on everyone.-D. D. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Love! Hate! Straight faces!
Writer Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) and married Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore) had a love affair for several years until she abruptly ended it. Two years later, Maurice meets her husband who suspects she is carrying on with someone; Maurice hires a private investigator to follow her, and falls in love with Sarah again.

This is probably a tear-jerking, steamy, and sentimental love story but I just didn't feel it. Fiennes, Moore and Stephen Rea, as Sarah's husband, play 95% of their scenes in slow-motion, with completely expressionless faces staring blankly into each other's eyes while their stoic voices recite passionate lines. I suppose it's meant to be very sophisticated and posh, but it seemed phony and empty to me. The character I liked best was Parkis, the private investigator, played by Ian Hart. (Note to Harry Potter fans: This movie has Professor Quirrell, Lucius Malfoy, and Voldemort all together!) Parkis was the one who tied up all the loose ends and was the only character who seemed emotionally open and honest. A nice subplot involving his son made me smile at the end, despite the vacuous love story.

The excellent WWII-period sets and costumes gave the movie a lot of atmosphere; it was the detached acting style that left me feeling nothing. Also, the story constantly switched from present to flashback making it a bit confusing and the addition of a miraculous, spiritual thread was unnecessary and awkward. I didn't connect with the characters or the love story; 2.5 stars.

'The end of the affair'
Wonderful movie, but then I was brought up in England during the era so it is very familiar in all aspects. Just adore Ralph Fiennes.

A terrible adaptation and performance
Not long ago I read Graham Greene's wonderful, "The End of the Affair". I was so impressed that I sought out a film version, and was again captivated with the 1955 production starring Van Johnson, Deborah Kerr, and Basil Rathbone. Loving the story and wanting more, I obtained the 1999 version starring Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore, and Stephen Rea. What a disappointment. Typical modern Hollywood alteration and cheapening of a great story and truth.

If I may expand a bit, in the order of least importance to greatest importance: Julianne Moore is only minimally attractive, and her flat acting performance in this role makes her even less so. The sex and nudity was gratuitous. (Wrapping this piece in a Graham Greene cloak does not make it less the soft core presentation that it is). The WWII England aura seems to have been diminished. Perhaps when the original film was made, memories were fresh . . . now they have faded (like this film). And, finally and most importantly . . .

Graham Greene was a spiritual man, in his own fashion. He held a complex but serious theology, which was usually expressed in his written work. This film version, however, must have him figuratively rolling over in his grave. The ending of the story has been substantially altered. In Greene's original version, God's hand moves mysteriously, complexly, but benevolently. The heroine makes painful but righteous ultimate decisions. In this modern adaptation, all is changed. God seems cruel. The players make selfish decisions, falsely painted as "righteous" under the banner of "pursuit of happiness". I was shocked and greatly disappointed when I viewed this. I suppose for many, this is a superior feel-good ending. I thought it was a crude violation of Greene's written masterpiece.

Watch this one if you will, but please don't neglect seeing the 1955 film version, or if you are a reader, Greene's novel by the same title.