This 1983 film, adapted by Harold Pinter from his own play, focuses on a love triangle involving a trio of upper-crust Londoners. Ben Kingsley plays a literary agent whose wife has an affair with his best friend, a successful publisher played by Jeremy Irons.
Click here to see the rest of this review...
Although the film's subject matter isn't novel, the treatment is. That is, the film starts at the end of the affair and works its way backward into the past. Thus, the film starts out with the married couple having an argument, and the wife running into her former lover after a two-year break. As the film progresses -- that is, moves back in time -- we gradually learn how and why the adulterous affair began. While this reverse chronology does away with any sense of suspense, it allows the audience to be much more informed than the characters, granting us a sense of omniscience.
The review of this Movie prepared by Elana Starr
