Barnes & Noble

Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan has a sensuous fascination with the darker impulses that drive human behavior. His rain-swept adaptation of Graham Greene's semiautobiographical novel, The End of the Affair, explores an adulterous love affair set in smoldering relief against the devastation of war-torn London in the 1940s. Ralph Fiennes stars as a brooding novelist obsessively in love with his neighbor's wife (Julianne Moore). Moore's understated performance garnered her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, and the dynamic Stephen Rea (The Crying Game, Interview With a Vampire) is also extraordinary as her cuckolded civil servant husband. True to Greene's book, the characters speak in dialogue layered with irony, and the sex scenes are provocatively restrained. The affair evolves in an elegant series of flashbacks within flashbacks, with Fiennes's character narrating in voice-over a tale that is a meditation on loss, misunderstanding, and the horrendous twists of fate that call the very nature of faith into question. Virginia McCollam

All Movie Guide

Based on the novel by Graham Greene, this romantic drama stars Ralph Fiennes as Maurice Bendrix, a novelist who, during World War II, had an affair with Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore), the wife of his best friend Henry (Stephen Rea). Sarah abruptly broke off the romance in 1944, but two years later, after Maurice runs into Henry, he becomes obsessed with the affair and hires a man to investigate Sarah. He reads her diary of their forbidden romance in the midst of the London Blitz and discovers that, overwhelmed with fear and guilt, she pledged to God that she would end the affair if Maurice's life were spared. Maurice is determined to reintroduce himself into Sarah's life, but she fears that being near him would be too great a temptation. The End of the Affair was previously brought to the screen in 1955 by Edward Dmytryk; this version was written for the screen and directed by Academy Award-winner Neil Jordan. Mark Deming

Product Details

• UPC: 043396047457
• Source: SONY PICTURES
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Pre-1954 Standard (1.33.1), Theatre Wide-Screen (1.85.1)
• Presentation: Pan & Scan, Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English
• Time: 1:41:00
• Sales Rank: 4,728

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• End of Affair / End of Affair

Features:

DVD MENU