NEW Unfaithful - Unfaithful (Blu-ray)

In short - the beginning was strong. The characters were more or less believable. The affair was convincing. Diane Lane did give a strong performance. The chemistry between Diane Lane and Olivier Martinez was as erotic as it was unsettling. Never did it seem that the affair was glamourized; always shot as secretive and sleazy. The core message was obvious, infidelity is a bad thing. This was successfully portrayed in the first half of the film and showed potential for being a strong film. Why the film decided to take a strange left turn and stumble through stupidity and banality is beyond me. Everything worked well up until Gere met with Olivier. Heck, even their meeting was OK. But they had to take it one step further. And in that one second, it all fell apart. Not to mention all the ridiculous plot holes the size of watermelons. What could have been an interesting film about the pitfalls of infidelity turned into a morality lesson. That lesson being, if your spouse has an affair, just kill their lover, then forgive each other and live happily ever after.

Diane Lane's character represents the target audience for this film: a housewife with a good marriage who nevertheless perhaps feels that there's a little something missing in her marriage. Maybe she feels her husband takes her for granted, or she feels confined in her house and her role in life, etc. She fantasizes about what it would be like to be swept off her feet by a buff, younger man -- maybe even one with a foreign accent.

Of course the movie is unrealistic from beginning to end. First, few wife/mothers entering the early stages of middle age have Lane's body. Second, the odds of running into a French playboy are slim at best. Third, it's probably not going to end in murder, but will almost certainly end in disgrace, divorce, the loss of both family AND boyfriend.

So go ahead and fantasize, ladies, but if the movie convinces you not to act on the fantasy, it will have served some small purpose. And give me an honest answer: If you thought the French guy was sexy, didn't you also get the feeling, when Gere's character confronted him, that it was a meeting of a grownup and a boy?

A suburban housewife(who is dressed as plain jane but wears hooker shoes) meets French book dealer(who sounds like he just came from Mexico). She is bored with her nice but dull Richard Gere and I guess the other guy is much more irresistible because he is "French" and wears a scarf. They start a steamy sexual affair and carry on without a care in the world. Nice husband eventually gets suspicious about why his wife doesn't want to get it on anymore and hires a private investigator. In the meantime, our little wifey obviously thinks that the "French" stud is faithful to her and is shocked to find out that he is definitely a gigolo.
Husband, upon finding out that his darling is having an affair, goes to her lover's apartment and brazenly declares "I'm her husband". To which the lover boy says"Oh, ok, you want a drink?" After having a drink, Richard Gere gets enraged(which I thought was the most pathetic acting I've seen in a long time) and kills the other guy. Then, he does a few other stupid things -like tries to drag the dead body out the apartment, apparently not worrying if anybody sees him and rides around with it for a while before dumping it . Eventually, he has to tell his lying cheating wife that he killed her lover and I guess he has to turn himself in. Movie ends on this note, where the wife is begging him not to do it and they could just disappear to Mexico(visit the boyfriend's relatives perhaps?). This was supposed to be a drama but I was laughing through the whole time.