Movie Review: Unfaithful

Unfaithful: Torgo approves

The best thing about this movie is its basic competence at delivering what it promises.

It's an erotic thriller in which Diane Lane's character is a frustrated housewife, raising eight-year-old one-of-the-kids-from-Malcolm-in-the-middle, married to Richard Gere with brown hair, living in ridiculously nice house outside NYC. She meets a French guy, they have lots of sex, Richard Gere finds out, bad things ensue.

If you've ever seen an "erotic thriller" before, you'll be mollified. I don't watch many of these, so I enjoyed it. I was disappointed to learn that this movie's director also did Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal. I only recently saw the former and never saw the latter. I wasn't much interested in either because the plots were so obvious I didn't see the need. Plus, Demi Moore and Glenn Close -- not that hot.

Diane Lane's something else. And while the movie delivers on the 'erotic' part, I did take the time to wonder why we know nothing more about Frenchy than that he's French (Parisian? Canadian? Qu'est-ce que c'est?), has lots of books, and is good with the, how you say, freaky freak.

Also, even though every time I see him in a movie I think, wow, he's wooden and boring, Richard Gere is supposedly a sex symbol. We decided that part of the plot would've been better had his role been played by Kevin James. Then, also, it would have been a comedy. Still formulaic, but entertaining, like the King of Queens.

But no, and by the time we get to the 'thriller' part, it gets all clunky and dull. There's an ambiguous ending and the one deleted scene (of, like, 10, I had the patience to try) showed how the original end scene went on for another minute and completely changed everything. How do I feel about that? Eh.

So if you're looking for a by-the-books erotic thriller with someone much hotter than Demi Moore or Glenn Close, Torgo approves.