Unfaithful

Diane Lane and Richard Gere in Unfaithful.

Unfaithful is a mediocre film with a stellar performance. Richard Gere plays against type and stretches as an actor. It is just too bad the rest of the film is so average.

Gere plays a well to do husband and father. The family lives just out- side of a big city in a very nice suburban home. In an awkwardly staged scene his wife meets a young man in the city. Soon an affair starts. During the day, when the husband is at work and the son is at school, the wife goes into the city to have sex with her lover.

Of course the secret eventually comes out. In one of the best scenes in the movie, Gere's broken hearted husband confronts his wife's lover in the lover's apartment. You watch his character completely melt emotionally as he walks about the place looking at the unmade bed and finds a snow globe that he had once given his wife who had in turn given it to her lover. In a state of complete emotional breakdown he hits the younger man over the head with the globe, killing him.

The rest of the movie plays out with some suspense as the police start asking questions. The wife does not know what happened to her lover. The husband is still wondering why his wife had the affair to begin with.

To me, that last question is the weak part of the movie. The movie never gives a reason for the affair. OK, this guy is younger and supposedly good-looking with a foreign accent. But the movie shows the husband and wife being intimate on several occasions. It is not as if he is neglecting his wife. There is one scene where the spouses are each talking about their own subject while the other is only half listening. If that is reason enough for an affair then I am in big trouble.

The movie ends in a brilliant, although ambiguous scene. The husband and wife are sitting in their SUV upset and crying. They have both confessed to each other and don't know what to do next. As the camera pulls away from the vehicle you see they are parked right next to a police station. Do they go in? It doesn't matter. They are now both devastated, scarred people, who will have to bear for the rest of their lives the guilt they deserve to carry.

This is not a completely well-thought-out movie. However, the performance by Gere is the best I have ever seen him give. 20 Years ago he would have played the part of the young lover. Watch this movie and you see that he has aged not only in years but as an actor as well.