'The End of the Affair', is well crafted

By Tam Notosusanto

JAKARTA (JP): No one, it seems, plays an adulterer sexier and more romantic than Ralph Fiennes. In The English Patient, he is Count Laszlo Almasy, the charming, seductive cartographer who manages to woo somebody else's wife. And now, in The End of the Affair, the latest work of writer-director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire, The Butcher Boy), once again he commits the nasty with the spouse of another man while still managing to be the romantic leading man movie audiences root for.

Here Fiennes plays Maurice Bendrix, an author in 1940s England who becomes acquainted with government bureaucrat Henry Miles (Stephen Rea) for purposes of research for his next novel. The unattractive and apparently boring Miles has a lovely, intelligent wife named Sarah (Julianne Moore), and it just seems inevitable that she and Bendrix will have an affair.

During the London blitz, amid the bomb raids and with the sirens wailing in the background, Bendrix and Sarah have their secret trysts, the only way they can meet without anybody noticing. But it is also during these moments when their romance abruptly ends. It happens when a bomb shatters the house where they are, injuring Bendrix. When he awakes, all he sees is Sarah getting dressed and leaving after saying, "Love doesn't end just because we don't see each other."

Adapted by Jordan himself from a novel by renowned author Graham Greene, the story apparently is not just about a passionate love affair and the consequences for everyone involved. In the true mystery fashion some of Greene's works are famous for, The End of the Affair revolves around Bendrix's attempt to discover why Sarah suddenly decides, and without warning, their affair is over.

This opportunity comes for Bendrix when he accidentally runs into Miles on the street one day, two years after his last encounter with Sarah. Miles spills out his deepest thoughts to Bendrix, that he suspects his wife is having an affair and that he is considering hiring a private detective to follow her.

Although Miles later retreats from this plan, Bendrix secretly follows it up, having a detective, Parkis (Ian Hart), follow every step that Sarah takes.

The film subsequently explores Bendrix's obsession, how anger and jealousy drive him to extremes to try to get Sarah back, if not to madly search for the reason he cannot have her. Out of suspicion and envy, he even confronts the priest (Jason Isaacs) that Sarah often goes to. "This is a diary of hate," a scene catches him typing, accentuating his silent rage buried deep within.

He is eventually reunited with Sarah, and they go out of town for a vacation together, but Bendrix soon realizes there will be no happy ending to their love story, learning that Sarah is suffering from a terminal illness.

The End of the Affair is essentially an ordinary romantic story about love lost and regained and lost again, but it has some aspects that make it rather special. First, it is based on a book regarded by many as the most autobiographical of all of Greene's novels, because it more or less recounts his own affair with the wife of a wealthy farmer. And second, in the talented hands of Neil Jordan, it becomes an exquisite, well-crafted melodrama.

Jordan, whom a year before released the very gruesome but funny The Butcher Boy, captures Greene's subtle humor, mostly provided by the incompetent detective Parkis and his more able assistant, his young son Lance. The characters are fully alive thanks to Hart's remarkable Cockney delivery and young actor Sam Bould's taciturn, but very expressive presentation.

Jordan is also the man responsible for the buried secrets of The Crying Game, and that explains his effective handling of the mystery behind Sarah's decision to leave Bendrix. Jordan's screenplay achieves this by use of a restructured storyline, utilizing flashbacks to portray two people's different accounts of the same events. Along the way, the director deals with themes of fate, miracles and faith, which are evoked with unlikely objects such as a birthmark on a child's face.

But this film is mainly about characters, and no matter how well-drawn they are, they will not become fully fleshed human beings without first-rate actors to deliver them. Fiennes is superb as a man who remains a charming gentleman throughout, although his fiery eyes tell us there is restrained ire beneath. Rea, who marks his eighth appearance in a Neil Jordan film with this one, presents us with his usual subdued but evocative performance as a helpless but most accepting person.

The center of attention, though, is the American actress Moore, admirable not just for the authentic English accent she employs, but for the earnest constellation of pain and passion she projects through Sarah. It is a performance the Academy Awards rightfully honored with a nomination for Best Actress.