Layered in regret, burnished with melancholy and driven by obsession, Neil Jordan's The End Of The Affair is a very adult romantic tragedy.
For that, no one should be ashamed. Not all love stories need to be turned into happy Hollywood romps. Tragedies can be just as enduring. Check with Shakespeare. Or watch Greta Garbo in classics such as Anna Karenina and Camille.
The End Of The Affair, told in part in flashbacks, is several steps short of a classic but is oddly compelling.
Not least because of the unusual setting -- this is the story of a sexually charged love triangle set against the Luftwaffe bombing of London during World War II.
One point in the triangle is a serious British civil servant (the sublimely sad Stephen Rea, Jordan's favourite actor). Opposite him is a writer friend (the ubiquitous Ralph Fiennes). The third point is the woman both men love, the bureaucrat's wife (American Julianne Moore convincingly turns British).
In Rea's character, Moore has domestic stability and a sense of being rooted. Their relationship is sexless yet built upon a foundation of mutual admiration.
In Fiennes' mercurial writer, Moore finds passion, primal sex and the confusion of his obsessive envy and possessiveness. As the title tells us, their affair is doomed. Just how and why is the meat of this emotional banquet.
And where it leads is mildly (although not entirely) surprising for anyone who has not read Graham Greene's book.
Jordan, who adapted the Greene novel himself before directing the piece with a fluid grace, cast wisely enough to elevate the material off the page and onto the screen with a kind of elegance that few directors can achieve.
Rea's singular presence transforms what could have been a tawdry tale -- at least in the movie version -- into the romantic tragedy it is. Rea is the 'fool,' yet not foolish.
Fiennes continues to refine a familiar yet still interesting character, the intellectual who casts aside logic and reason and descends into the murky depths to find true love. Always in impossible circumstances. We've seen him do that already in The English Patient, Oscar And Lucinda and two other new films that screened at the Toronto filmfest, Onegin and Sunshine. Fiennes is cornering the market in doomed lovers.
Moore is, as always, selfless and savagely real in the most restrained manner possible. She can somehow transform base acts such as sex into weighty metaphors of life, often with gestures, looks and an absolute minimum of words. Extraordinary.
The End Of The Affair is a gloomy thing to behold. But in its sadness, in the rainy nights where we meet our heroes in the shadows, there is a light of understanding.
(This film is rated R )
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