drian Lyne’s movie has a split personality. The first part chronicles a furtive love affair and is exceptional. Affluent suburban housewife Connie Sumner (Diane Lane) meets a young antique book dealer Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez) by chance in New York and begins a torrid affair. Her trusting and timid husband Ed (Richard Gere, interestingly out of macho character) picks up the clues slowly. Lane is sterling, her every nervous move perfectly considered. Her left turn into danger is seamlessly believable.
True, Martinez is hackneyed — but hunky French antique book dealers don’t exactly earn much cinematic space. The movie’s grist, or so seems, is what happens when Ed discovers the affair and confronts Martel. Lane holds up her end, but the rest of the plot plays out like the unsavory leavings of bad psychological thriller. Adapted from Claude Chabrol’s “La femme infidèle.”
