Unfaithful (Widescreen Edition)

Unfaithful (Widescreen Edition)

Unfaithful (Widescreen Edition)
List Price: $14.98
Our Price: $5.82
You Save: $9.16 (61%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.02 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details


(Click here)
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada

DVD details

Actor: Diane Lane, Erik Per Sullivan, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Olivier Martinez, Richard Gere
Brand: GERE,RICHARD
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 124 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-12-17
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox

DVD Reviews of Unfaithful (Widescreen Edition)

DVD Review: Diane Lane gives Oscar winning performance
Summary: 5 Stars

Diane Lane gives the performance of a lifetime as Connie Sumner in Unfaithful. This moral tragedy begins when upon a chance encounter Connie throws caution to the wind and has an affair with Olivier Martinez (as Paul Martel). What Connie doesn't realize until her lunch with Kate Burton (Richard Burton's daughter in real life) is she is sewing the seeds of her own destruction. Diane Lane's stellar performance is truly remarkable and most Oscar worthy. Unfortunately Adrian Lyne's film direction emphasizes Diane Lane's physical attributes over her acting ability which is probably why he will not win an Oscar for best director and why the film will most likely suffer the same fate. However, in spite of Adrian Lyne's direction, Diane Lane's spellbinding performance really shines through.

Adrian Lyne borrows from the Max Färberböck directed German film Aimee and Jaguar to portray Connie's first assignation with Paul. I can truly appreciate Ms. Lane's marvelous form but it can distract the viewer from the internal conflict between her pleasure and her conscience during the liaison and her post-coital guilt and remorse on the train. Her angst is so overpowering that I don't believe I have ever seen another actress display such overwhelming sorrow as well as Diane Lane has in the famous train scene. Her performance is truly heartfelt and should win her an Oscar.

However, Adrian Lyne diminished his chances of an Oscar by borrowing from the wrong film. Instead he should have borrowed from the Thomas Crown Affair directed by Norm Jewison and starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. There is a scene in this film where the protagonist, Steve McQueen, is playing chess with his antagonist, Faye Dunaway, in what I regard as one of the most highly erotic scenes in the history of cinema. The camera switches between facial shots of the two, building into a crescendo of eroticism that is so visibly apparent on the two characters faces that you end up viewing one of the most memorable lovemaking scenes without ever seeing their bodies. Norm Jewison, in a true genius fashion, let the power of the viewers' imagination take over.

If Adrian Lyne borrowed from the Thomas Crown Affair he could have shown rapidly switching shots of Diane Lane's face in the bedroom scene and on the train. Her face tells the whole story. Eroticism is so much more powerful than sex because it intertwines one's emotional state with the physical arousal enhancing both to indescribably delirious levels. Norm Jewison understands the power of the mind but Adrian Lyne simply could not resist showing off Diane Lane's wonderful form and consequently sold her short. What Adrian Lyne does not seem to realize is that a woman's sexual essence does not come so much from her body as from her state of mind and the best way to portray that on film is to focus on her expression. Diane Lane's eyes tells volumes of her arousal, her sexuality, her womanhood and her internal conflict. Adrian Lyne really could have heightened the film's sexual tension by focusing less on Diane's physical attributes-and he didn't.

A case in point-In the Restaurant bathroom scene Adrian Lyne could have shot just above the bathroom partition. We all know what is happening. We don't need to be spoon fed. Alfred Hitchcock was the great master of the mind. His films were so great because he stimulated our imagination and led us to draw our own conclusions. I would have deliberately waited until the very last scene in the hallway outside Paul's Apartment before I showed Connie engaged with her paramour. I would have done this because Paul gets his punishment just moments later and thus it reinforces the consequences of sin and betrayal. But more importantly it would have had the viewers' attention focused more on Diane Lane's quintessential acting rather than on her magnificent body.

Switching to the murder Scene-You have to believe that Connie giving away the personal gift of the music box with the crystal globe is what pushes Edward Sumner (Richard Gere) over the edge. In the scene with Paul in Paul's pied à terre Edward is barely coping with Connie's assignations, but her giving away the gift symbolizing the couple's marital bond is the coup de grâce. Of course, it is latter in the film when we realize the true meaning of the gift and that she insouciantly gave it away as if she were discarding broken egg shells into the garbage. Instead it was her marriage which she shattered then tossed without a moment's thought.

Connie's betrayal of Edward and Edward's murder of Paul reduces their marriage to a lugubrious melancholy. There is a scene near the end of the film showing Connie dancing with her son Charlie with a morose expression on her face and her body as limp as a dish rag, shuffling aimlessly, as if she is just going through the motions of life without really experiencing it. In the end nothing Connie and Edward do seems to matter. Things have come full circle. The perpetrators are now the victims and their souls have been extinguished by their most regrettable actions. Their marriage is now a bond of sorrow.

Kate Burton, as Tracy, should also get a best supporting actress Oscar because she frames the devastating consequences of an affair so clearly in her luncheon with Connie and Sally at the corner restaurant. What some people don't seem to realize is that ultimately the affair harms the perpetrator as much as the spouse. Tracy has carried with her the almost unbearable burden of her guilt for a good part of her adult life and her misery and self loathing are painfully evident. The grief shown on Kate Burton's face and the regret she has for betraying herself as well as her husband are quite poignant thus earning her a most deserved Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.

More Unfaithful (Widescreen Edition) reviews:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Description of Unfaithful (Widescreen Edition)

Connie Sumner, living in the New York City suburbs with a loving husband and wonderful child, begins an affair with a mysterious young man.
Genre: Mystery
Rating: R
Release Date: 7-SEP-2004
Media Type: DVD
If you ever need dramatic proof that adultery is inevitably destructive, look no further than Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful. Drawing inspiration from Claude Chabrol's 1969 film La Femme Infidèle, the director of Fatal Attraction is mining similar territory here, but this grownup thriller is more intimate than Lyne's dead-bunny potboiler, probing more deeply into the rush of conflicting emotions provoked by infidelity. In what many critics praised as the role of her career, Diane Lane plays the instigator of emotional turmoil, a seemingly happy housewife and fundraiser who cheats on her devoted husband (Richard Gere, in a welcomed change of pace) when she casually encounters a seductive Frenchman (cliché alert!) played by Olivier Martinez. Allowing his actors to speak volumes without words, Lyne emphasizes silent tension over explicit thrills, creating a sexually charged thriller that remains riveting even as it turns partially predictable. "Someone always gets hurt," says one character in a pivotal scene, and Unfaithful fulfills that prophesy in a timeless tale of passion. --Jeff Shannon
Bestsellers in DVD
The Story of Jeremiah [VHS] ImageThe Story of Jeremiah [VHS]
Vision Video; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Wresting With God [VHS] ImageWresting With God [VHS]
by Vision Video
Vision Video; Published: 1990-10-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops: $19.99
Study Bible Video with Workbook [VHS] ImageStudy Bible Video with Workbook [VHS]
Spring Arbor Distributors; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops: $44.00
Tempo:Childrens TV Favourites Video [VHS] ImageTempo:Childrens TV Favourites Video [VHS]
HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $9.17
Price in other shops: $9.98
Tempo.Herbs:Parseley'Sb/Party Video [VHS] ImageTempo.Herbs:Parseley'Sb/ Party Video [VHS]
HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Strike the Original Match [VHS] ImageStrike the Original Match [VHS]
New Liberty Films; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops: $14.95
Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS] ImageMedjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS]
JPN Film Production; Release date: 1995-12-15; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $29.99
Mayo Clinic Echocardiography Review Course for Boards and Recertification DVD 2008 ImageMayo Clinic Echocardiography Review Course for Boards and Recertification DVD 2008
by Mayo
DVD
Price in other shops: $1,463.24
Pediatric Diagnostic Imaging DVD: Single User ImagePediatric Diagnostic Imaging DVD: Single User
by Oakstone
DVD
Price in other shops: $1,463.24
Cost Accounting [VHS] ImageCost Accounting [VHS]
by Charles T. Horngren, George Foster, Srikant M. Datar, Howard Teall
Pearson Canada, Toronto; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
What Lies Beneath ImageWhat Lies Beneath
Paramount; Release date: 2001-01-30; DVD
Best price: $4.28
Price in other shops: $9.98
Disclosure ImageDisclosure
Warner Brothers; Release date: 1997-04-29; Published: 1997-04-01; DVD
Best price: $4.66
Price in other shops: $12.98
Body Heat (Deluxe Edition) ImageBody Heat (Deluxe Edition)
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2006-10-24; DVD
Best price: $3.40
Price in other shops: $5.97
Basic Instinct - Director's Cut (Ultimate Edition) ImageBasic Instinct - Director's Cut (Ultimate Edition)
Lions Gate; Release date: 2006-03-14; DVD
Best price: $4.78
Price in other shops: $9.98
9 1/2 Weeks (Keep Case Packaging) Image9 1/ 2 Weeks (Keep Case Packaging)
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2009-06-30; DVD
Best price: $3.52
Price in other shops: $5.97
A Perfect Murder ImageA Perfect Murder
DOUGLAS,MICHAEL; Release date: 1998-11-03; DVD
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops: $12.98
Final Analysis ImageFinal Analysis
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2004-06-01; DVD
Best price: $3.00
Price in other shops: $9.97
Indecent Proposal ImageIndecent Proposal
REDFORD,ROBERT; Release date: 2002-04-16; DVD
Best price: $3.91
Price in other shops: $8.99
Nights in Rodanthe ImageNights in Rodanthe
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2009-02-10; Published: 2009-02-01; DVD
Best price: $2.78
Price in other shops: $5.97
Fatal Attraction (Special Collector's Edition) ImageFatal Attraction (Special Collector's Edition)
Paramount; Release date: 2002-04-16; DVD
Best price: $3.91
Price in other shops: $8.99
Compare prices and read customer reviews for more than one million DVD titles.
Oscar 2005 Winners