| | | An Adrian Lyne film|An Adrian Lyne Film.
Features: DVD, Pan and Scan (TV Format)
From the director of Fatal Attraction comes this scorching "seductive tease of a thriller" (Rolling Stone) about sexual passion so intense, it consume everything -- and everyone -- that crosses its path.Edward and Connie Sumner (Richard Gere, Diane Lane) seem to have the perfect marriage. But when Connie's chance encounter with a handsome stranger (Oliver Martinez) erupts into a full-blown affair, desire becomes obsession, and the true price of betrayal takes a shattering toll. Pulsing with heart-pounding suspense and erotic thrills, Unfaithful is "sensational!" (Entertainment Weekly)
"Lane...is tremendous...always honest, truthful and utterly convincing." Jason Best, BBCi
"A steamy thriller!" People Magazine
"Ms. Lane has the role of her career..." Stephen Holden, The New York imes
"...the performance by Diane Lane [is] nothing short of miraculous." Rex Reed, New York Observer
"...[Lane] is tremendous...always honest, truthful and utterly convincing." Jason Best, BBC
"Meticulously crafted and beautifully performed." Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
"All the accolades Lyne got for "Fatal Attraction" -- and didn't really merit -- he deserves here." Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
"Lane is a force of nature. Her slow-burning, fiercely erotic performance charges the movie." Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
Editor's Note
Connie Sumner (Diane Lane) travels to New York City from the suburban home she shares with her husband Edward (Richard Gere) and young son Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan). It is a very windy day and, caught by a particularly savage gust, Connie falls and bumps into bookseller Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez) in the process. She scrapes her knees, and Paul invites her into his apartment. She stays only briefly, leaving after attending to her knees. She passes the accident off as trivial to Edward. But, she is drawn to the younger man and soon returns to his apartment with eventually disastrous results. UNFAITHFUL is based on Claude Chabrol's classic LA FEMME INFIDELE (1969). The drama has been shifted from Paris to New York City by scriptwriters Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr. Beautifully lit by director of photography Peter Biziou, UNFAITHFUL is staged with rare subtlety by director Adrian Lyne. Diane Lane gives an extraordinarily fine performance, viscerally conveying how torn Connie is between her attraction for Paul and her love for Edward and Charlie. There is excellent support from Gere, Martinez, Sullivan and Zeljko Ivanek. UNFAITHFUL is the rare case of a remake that measures up to, and maybe even surpasses, the original.
| Features | Interactive Menus | | Scene Access | | Behind-The-Scenes Featurette "An Affair To Remember" | | Editing Featurette | | Cast Interviews | | Scene-Specific Actors' Commentary | | 11 Deleted Scenes (Including Alternate Ending) With Optional Director's Commentary | | Interview With Richard Gere, Diane Lane And Adrian Lyne From The Charlie Rose Show | | Full Length Audio Commentary By Director Adrian Lyne | | Audio: English 5.1 Surround; Spanish, French Dolby Surround | | Subtitles: English, Spanish |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Foxvideo |
| Release Date: 4/10/2007 |
| Running Time: 124 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2002 | | Catalog ID: 2005962 | | UPC: 00024543059622 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English [CC], English, French Dubbed, Spanish Dubbed | | Available Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Standard 1.33:1 [4:3] |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Oscar (2003) | | | Diane Lane, Nominee, Best Actress in a Leading Role | |
Golden Globe (2003) | | | Diane Lane, Nominee, Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama | |
Screen Actors Guild (2003) | | | Diane Lane, Nominee, Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role |
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| | Professional Reviews | Los Angeles Times
"...Slick, sleek...Erotic....Lane's finely emotional presentation is the film's convincer..." 05/08/2002 p.C1USA Today
"...[Lane] reaches a new career plateau..." 05/08/2002 p.6D New York Times
"...UNFAITHFUL has a taut, economical screenplay..." 05/08/2002 p.E1 USA Today
"...Filmed both sensually and thoughtfully, thanks in part to a performance by Diane Lane that gracefully turns from forcefully sensual to weary..." 05/10/2002 p.12D Rolling Stone
"...Lane is a force of nature. Her slow-burning, fiercely erotic performance charges the movie..." 06/06/2002 p.84 Variety
"...Lane serves up a compulsively watchable performance....[Martinez] is smoothly convincing..." 05/06/2002 p.41-6 Entertainment Weekly
"...Sensational sex-and-its-consequences melodrama....Lane, in the most urgent performance of her career, is a revelation..." 05/17/2002 p.50 Wall Street Journal
"The film is Ms. Lane's from start to finish; she gives a sensationally fine performance." 10/23/2009 Entertainment Today 8 of 10
...a true study, a film with a questioning heart and mind that isn't afraid to admit it doesn't have all the answers. - Brent Simon
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
The heart has its reasons, said the French philosopher Pascal, quoted by the American philosopher Woody Allen. It is a useful insight when no other reasons seem apparent. Connie Sumner's heart and other organs have their reasons for straying outside a happy marriage in "Unfaithful,'' but the movie doesn't say what they are. This is not necessarily a bad thing, sparing us tortured Freudian explanations and labored plot points. It is almost always more interesting to observe behavior than to listen to reasons...Connie (Diane Lane) and her husband, Edward (Richard Gere), live with their 9-year-old son, Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan), in one of those Westchester County houses that has a room for every mood. They are happy together, or at least the movie supplies us with no reasons why they are unhappy...The movie was directed by Adrian Lyne, best known for higher-voltage films like "Fatal Attraction" and "Indecent Proposal.'' This film is based on "La Femme Infidele" (1969) by Claude Chabrol, which itself is an update of Madame Bovary. Lyne's film is juicier and more passionate than Chabrol's, but both share the fairly daring idea of showing a plot that is entirely about illicit passion and its consequences in a happy marriage. Although cops turn up from time to time in "Unfaithful," this is not a crime story, but a marital tragedy. Richard Gere and Diane Lane are well-suited to the roles, exuding a kind of serene materialism that seems happily settled in suburbia. It is all the more shocking when Lane revisits Martel's apartment because there is no suggestion that she is unhappy with Gere, starved for sex, or especially impulsive. She goes back up there because--well, because she wants to. He's quite a guy. On one visit he shows her The Joy of Cooking in Braille. And then his fingers brush hers as if he's reading The Joy of Sex on her skin. - Roger Ebert
ReelViews 7 of 10
Adrian Lyne must have a fascination for examining the ins and outs of marital infidelity. Unfaithful, Lyne's first outing since the controversial Lolita, follows in the distant wake of Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal. In some ways, Unfaithful (based on Calude Chabrol's superior La Femme Infidele, which was a re-telling of "Madame Bovary") is the least complicated of the three, but the moral is the same: extra-marital sex, regardless of the underlying reasons, is a bad idea. As one character in this movie suggests, it may all start as fun and games, but, once it moves past a one-night stand, it will inevitably end badly for one or both parties...The first two-thirds of Unfaithful are an interesting, if at times overwrought, look at how a seemingly happily-married woman can fall into an affair, and how she copes with leading a double life. She loves her son and husband, but craves the other man. For a while, the clandestine nature of this relationship is blissful, but there comes a time when complications begin to surface - she becomes careless, forgets to pick up her son after school, and tells lies that are easily disproved. Her husband becomes suspicious. That's when Unfaithful takes an unfortunate turn down a blind alley that leads to lurid melodrama...I would almost be willing to recommend Unfaithful as a guilty pleasure if not for the final forty minutes. I hate it when screenplays take the easy way out, and that's what happens here. After the plot's big turning point, the movie loses its focus and can't decide whether it wants to be a melodrama or a crime thriller. The ending is ambiguous in all the wrong ways, and comes across as a cheat more than anything else. (I had a feeling, based on the way the closing scene was edited, that something was coming that didn't happen - it may have ended up on the cutting room floor.) The good points about Unfaithful can't overcome the movie's eventual downward spiral. - James Berardinelli
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