An Affair of Love (1999)

A memo to all couples....talk

Can two people separate sex from the warmth of human interaction?

This wonderful movie maps the development of a relationship from an original plan for uninhibited and uncomplicated sexual encounters. Clearly both come to enjoy their interactions and their encounters, yet something still holds both back from the full spectrum of an intimate relationship - is it the shadow of the original intent; a fear of commitment; or the possibility of rejection.

This movie has a great message for everyone - talk and open your heart to another person. This is an excellent movie, superbly acted and well worth purchasing.
June 13, 2008

They sure could have accumulated lots of Marriott Rewards Points!

Sex without love morphs into sex with love and then peters out into neither sex nor love. "An Affair of Love" reverses the usual chronology of attraction and affection leading to consummation. The protagonists immediately round home plate and then later experiment with touching first base, second and third. The pattern of anonymous sex in a regular private space sealed off from the world evoked to me a sense of "Last Tango in Paris," without the rough play.

Nathalie Bay and Sergei Lopez are excellent - erotically charged despite the evident age difference -- and although the plot could make you feel claustrophobic if you heard the synopsis, it never feels this way. Most all the action occurs in a street side café and in a hotel room. A steamy take on "Afternoon Delight"!

Can carnal passion offer a solid foundation for a lasting relationship? How can that connection be fueled if (when) the fires of passion cool? Will peeking behind the cloak of anonymity let the air out of the romantic balloon? Interesting questions hinted at by this adroit film!

Worth seeing!
March 2, 2008

Steams the Screen

This DVD rental was such a surprise delight. Frederic Fonteyne has directed "Gillie's Wife," but I've never focused on him as a director. The premise is fairly simple: a man and woman answer each other's personal ad. They meet strictly for sex. While I have only seen the U.S. DVD, it certainly is not "pornographic," as the French title might suggest. There is nearly no nudity in the film. The cinematic tension comes as Nathalie Baye and Sergi Lopez, who both won Best Actor awards at the Venice Film Festival for their work, steam the screen with their emotional tension and desire. Free from the encumbrances of the outside world, the couple focuses solely on each other: their needs, desires and pleasure. In this aspect, the film seems uniquely French. Both actors are celebrated in Europe. Baye won four Cesar Awards in France including "Le Petit Lieutenant" in 2006. Lopez won the Cesar for "Harry un ami qui vous veut du bien," or as it was titled in one English release "Harry, He's Here to Help." There is a beauiful cameo by Sylvie Van den Elsen as Madame Lignaux. The couple meet her as her husband runs into them at the hotel and dies of an apparent heart attack. In his dying scene, he tells them that he can't stand his wife and has left her. Van den Elsen seems self-controlled as they converse in a cafe. Later, they read of her suicide. The film speaks volumes to me about the relationship between men and women. "You can't live with them, can't live without them." Ultimately, the success or failure of relationships is facilitated or doomed by the quality and honesty of their communication on physical, intellectual and value levels. Had this been a Hollywood picture, corporate would have insisted the couple get together in the final frame. This is a picture that is well done with two stunning performances by Lopez and Baye. Bravo! December 13, 2007

Womans Film

This is a film made for women,but i must admit it almost had me in tears. it is so sensual, only the french can make films like this. no full on sex just a story about two people who meet,and how their relationship grows into love,that is not to be. i saw it on bbc four in england late one night under a french title,its subtitled , and that almost made me switch off, but i didnt,instead i bought the dvd, ladies if you want a good cry,this is for you.
E.W.Hunter July 28, 2007

A Fascinating Experiment, Hobbled by Its Conventions and Artifices

This is certainly not my favorite film, but it was fascinating to watch and is worth seeing just for the astonishing Sergi Lopez, who is one of the sexiest men working in pictures today.

The film concerns a woman and a man who meet through a personals ad posted by the woman, in order to explore a long-desired kink of hers. The external world intrudes when a neighbor in the building where they meet suffers a medical crisis and together they accompany him to the hospital. As their regular assignations continue, they flirt with developing something deeper, but "pull out" as it were. The movie is presented as separate post-mortem interviews as well as scenes from the affair.

Each work of art has its conventions and artifices. It is not the obviousness of the conventions used here that bothered me -- indeed, I found them admirably rigorous. I can even grasp the purpose of these conventions, but in the end I felt that some of them worked against the filmmaker's intentions and encumbered the film.

The conventions imposed by the filmmaker revolve around an artificial absence of context: not knowing the protagonists' names, not knowing the particular kink that brings them together, knowing nothing of their outside lives. This underlines a very important point -- it is precisely the lack of context that fuels affairs based on casual or adulterous sex. It's easy to have great sex if the arrangement omits day-to-day trials and tribulations, if neither partner is exposed to the other's B.S. It's also a truism that the longer a casual or adulterous affair continues, the likelier it is that real life will bleed into it. To this extent, the trajectory of the film is quite true to life. And the conventions of the film serve to codify the conventions of the affair. Lack of context is the foundation of the affair and the framework of the movie.

I even understand why the only sex we are "allowed" to see is the vanilla encounter -- and, indeed, this scene (shot if I'm not mistaken in one continuous take) is a veritable tour de force. Again, there is a certain rigor and irony to asserting that the particular kink is irrelevant and then sharing the straight sex as something "kinky" and even risky in this context, an encounter demanding vulnerability, an encounter that could bridge the couple to real life.

In sum, though, the conventions seem coy and encumbering in their extremity, hence counterproductive. That the characters don't even have names (just "Lui" and "Elle") is coy and annoying. It's not like these characters are representing Everyman and Everywoman. We're all grown-ups, so failing to acknowledge the particular kink just strikes us as silly, and it makes the straight sex scene rather gratuitous. The quasi-documentary style reinforces this reverse prurience. On the other hand, the subjects are entitled to reveal whatever they want about themselves. To that extent, I aver that superficially at least the conventions of this movie are consistent and airtight. But for me, somehow, they didn't hang together. May 26, 2007

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