SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Dave This is a very good drama about an affair in 1940s London. It's much better than the original. Julianne Moore is excellent as a woman who's married to a boring man and has an affair with a single man who's a writer. Her middle-class English accent is perfect. She should have won the Academy Award for Best Actress.The sex scenes (which are an essential part of the film) are the only reason that this is an 18 certificate in the UK.

ferdinand1932 There is much to like and admire in this: the script is well-turned, nuanced and may actually be better than the novel in many respects; the photography is perfect in detail and lighting and renders the characters ideally.The music is extremely effective and really underlines the film because it is elegiac; it echoes the past and because memory works in fragments it reminds strongly of those special moments which are gone.It is the direction and performance which give this film real depth and emotional engagement and for anyone who has ever had someone taken or lost, it will resonate.The three main characters are all solemn in their duty, in love, in pain and in regret. It is a technique that works powerfully and is in times with the war period and with the generation that saw life in dutiful and solemn terms. It gives a pitch of authenticity to the film and the casting has worked perfectly as Fiennes does solemn like no one else in the business, and he seems just right as a writer: introverted, analytical, abstract.It is a film,(a novel) and it offers the best of people and a connection to the mystical. The truth of the real affair that provided the basis to the story was not, however; that was debauched and narcissistic, but that fact is not important with this film.

jpschapira There are faces that cameras like. Ralph Fiennes, for example, in any movie you watch him, whether he is a psycho killer ("Red Dragon") or Voldemort himself ("Harry Potter"), he looks good. If the camera loves you, you don't need to worry because at the end of the day everything will be okay, and I say this because I've never thought of him as a great actor. Again, the camera loves his face but that face says nothing to me. Even more interesting, I've never seen him hit the right chemistry with a female co-star; not with Jennifer Lopez in "Maid in Manhattan", not with Rachel Weisz in "The Constant Gardener". Here, in Neil Jordan's "The end of the affair", the chemistry is not the best with Julianne Moore, but we feel the overwhelming love the movie is trying to express. Has it got to do with other things? Julianne Moore, undoubtedly one of America's best contemporary actresses and one that can do just about anything, plays Sarah Miles, the wife of Henry Miles (Stephen Rea) who falls in love with Maurice Bendrix, the character played by Fiennes.This is the basic establishment of the film, which will revolve around these three characters in what we could define as an 'exploration'. Jordan, who adapted Graham Greene's homonymous novel in a very ambitious script, is great at playing with expectations. The viewer never quite knows when things are occurring and if they are truly occurring: characters wear the same clothes most of the time, scenes and conversations are repeated from different perspectives and flashbacks come out of nowhere. From the very first scene, Roger Pratt's cinematography suggests quite a dreamlike mood; and Michael Nyman's intense score accentuates it. So Jordan develops the characters, makes them talk, shoots them making passionate love in sex scenes that say a lot, works heavily on the looks and everything turns slow, very slow so we can understand this 'affair'; but nothing is ever boring. To contribute to the definition of 'exploration', the film introduces a private investigator as a major secondary character (played by Ian Hart) as both Sarah's husband and her lover in different occasions attempt to investigate her. Turns out Sarah is a woman with a very profound inner world, that translates differently on the outside.This ambivalence is the key of Moore's brilliant performance, and in a film with very few of those we would call moments, she composes a human being we want to understand and we finally do because Moore and the movie gladly help us. There is one scene, maybe the film's only 'moment', in which a siren sounds and Sarah has to leave Maurice. Pay attention at Moore in that precise moment, at everything she does and says before concluding in one simple word: "Yes". What she does can't be described because it must be experienced; and that whole scene in which Fiennes shines like man filled with love, is a scene I'd like to be able to watch frequently as it occurs to me with scenes in movies that represent pure, perfect acting (I recall one scene with Winona Ryder and Cher in "Mermaids"…do you remember?).The portrayal of Stephen Rea as Sarah's husband Henry is also crucial, because his character needs to appear as completely naive and insubstantial, and it's not easy to sustain that image for two hours. Rea really seems like an anonymous guy in the world. Fiennes' work on the other hand expresses the monumental love I was just talking about. His character is a writer, and as Sarah's lover, he finds a new meaning for love every day, and astonishes her with how he puts it in words. Henry and Maurice are two jealous men, of the same woman; and it will be the writer who will at one point tell Henry: "Lovers are jealous, husbands are ridiculous", resuming in this way their fundamental difference. I still haven't talked about God; about another part of the definition of 'exploration' that is related with exploring the faith. It is not a minor subject of the movie and it's implicated in some of the things I've said in this review, but I'll leave it for you to discover that plot line and relate it with the things I admired about this very ambitious piece. A piece you could see as a story about an affair, as a tale about love, as a character piece, or more concretely expressed and interesting: the story of two men united by the love they felt for the same woman. Would you go see a film promoted like that? Everything is possible.

vangogh228 The obvious lack of insight shown by some of the commenters is more than merely shocking. There are so many layers, Gordian-knot twists and intricate dialog in this film that, I guess, there are many who simply don't understand the subtleties contained within it. But, then, what can one expect from those who misquote dialog and level their expectations based on their own ego, in believing that displaying unimpressibility is a sign of intelligence?One scene in particular explains it all... in which Bendrix runs limpingly, desperately, across the common in a vain attempt to catch Sara as she is driven away, sobbing uncontrollably, in a cab. When he finally does reach her, in the church, her resignation to him and his melancholy in recognizing her reason it is far too wonderful and moving to explain.Much of the dialog should keep one up at night to ponder the nature of our own existence... "Strange how much dignity there can be in a hat." But, I am sure this is lost on those who, when they attend a movie, understand only one-punch knockouts and shots to the groin as expressions of emotion.