LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Adrian Lyne: Fatal Attraction
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The thrill and consequences of adultery are in sharp relief in this intelligent, adult film by director Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, Lolita). Connie Sumner (Diane Lane) is a happy New York socialite with a husband and son (Richard Gere and Malcolm’s Dewey, Erik Per Sullivan) in the suburbs who gets drawn into a very steamy affair with an exotic book dealer (Olivier Martinez). This remake of a 30-year-old French film (Claude Chabrol’s La Femme Infidel) is modernised and fleshed-out, adding much more of the actual affair and adding a dramatic third act. What makes Unfaithful fascinating is the unanswered causes for the affair itself — there is no horrible husband or unhappy home life to drive Connie into the arms of another man. It manages to say “it’s just one of those things that happens” without being glib or dismissive of it — and to that end, Unfaithful is entirely the Diane Lane show. She manages the remarkable feat of remaining compassionate even while she lies to her husband and child, who remain sweet as can be throughout. Richard Gere strips away his typical swagger in this career-altering turn as the bookish, sensitive cuckold, while Olivier Martinez does a lot to heat up the steamy sex scenes.
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In 1987 Lyne hit full stride with his thriller Fatal Attraction, which marked a trifecta high-point in Lyne's career as a taut telling of a fling-turned-obsession complete with perilous aftermath. It was an enormous and well-deserved success for Lyne, establishing him as a director who could pick and choose projects as he pleased. He chose Jacob's Ladder. It stands, previous to his current film, as his best work. To see it is to experience it, in a way no other film has managed, an excruciatingly painful trip into a fragile psyche shackled in purgatory. It is a total immersion into the world of a Vietnam vet played by Tim Robbins, who turns in a bravura performance that, like the film, was under-appreciated at the time.
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Lyne is a gifted and frustrating movie-maker. Is the punishing moralism and misogyny that surfaces in "Fatal Attraction" and the silly "Indecent Proposal" for real--or just his calculated notion of what the American moviegoer wants? He may have reason to be cynical, when his most pandering films become huge hits, and his more interesting, honest movies--"Foxes," "Jacob's Ladder"--don't find an audience. When it's a movie about desire, "Unfaithful" shows what a powerful, sexy, smart filmmaker Lyne can be. It's a shame he substitutes the mechanics of suspense for the real suspense of what goes on between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife.
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Can it be that, once again, human sexuality finds itself diminished at the hands of Adrian Lyne? To a growing oeuvre devoted to obsession and shame, (Lyne is already responsible for "9 ? Weeks," "Fatal Attraction" and "Indecent Proposal") the English director now adds "Unfaithful," a meditation on infidelity loosely based on a film by the New Wave master Claude Chabrol. To that end, Lyne has tried to imitate French cinema's characteristic way with the weight of the unsaid. Instead, he has ended up with the vacuity of the unthought, the half-imagined, and the misunderstood.
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Adrian Lyne (9 1/2 Weeks, Fatal Attraction) aficionados are likely to be disappointed by his latest film. Why? Because the director's fans typically attend his movies for one of two things — sex or suspense — and Unfaithful is rarely either erotic or thrilling. But... Lyne's chronicle of a suburban wife's carnal dalliance is dramatically compelling, thanks to an extraordinary performance by Diane Lane.
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In 1987, Lyne was criticised for changing the ending of his biggest hit, Fatal Attraction, another adultery drama. In the original ending, Glenn Close's character commits suicide off screen; in the released version, she is killed in self-defence.
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