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It's entirely fitting that The End of the Affair plays out in a 1940s London that's either blacked-out during the Blitz or wreathed in a pea-souper during the post-war period. After all, Neil Jordan's movie is a mystery play in the guise of a love-story, and its interior is a fog of conjecture and misunderstanding. Only at the end does the mist clear away and we see things in stark clarity.

Based on Graham Greene's most autobiographical novel, The End of the Affair offers an autopsy of the adulterous love affair between glacial Sarah Miles (Oscar-nominated Julianne Moore) and intense writer Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes). Out on the sidelines, Ian Hart proves convincingly twitchy as a working-class private eye, while Jordan regular Stephen Rea (as the cuckolded husband) mooches about with a face like November. In the mean-time, the movie circles deliberately around its central bone of contention: the bomb blast that spared Maurice's life but brought his relationship with Sarah to its sudden, inexplicable end.

Unfortunately, The End of the Affair winds up something of a mixed bag. If anything, Jordan is almost too respectful of Greene's source material: toiling lovingly on the intricacies of his story (its shabby London settings, its clash of profane love with redemptive Catholicism) while leaving the drama idling. The result is a film you'll probably admire rather than love. Its chill ambience dampens down the passion. --Xan Brooks

Release Date: Apr 12, 2004
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