Herald rating: * * *
Running time: 105 mins
Rental: Today
Review: Ewan McDonald
Two men meet in a London park during the Blitz. One is a civil servant — remember those? — named Henry Miles (Stephen Rea). The other is a novelist, Maurice Bendix (Ralph Fiennes).
Henry is married to Sarah (Julianne Moore).
Maurice was her lover. Henry believes Sarah is meeting another man and wants Maurice to hire a private detective to follow Sarah.
The film, based on Graham Greene's 1951 novel of his relationship with a married woman, seesaws back to when Maurice and Sarah met just before the war.
Henry was preoccupied with his government work. The two carried on their affair until a German air-raid hit Maurice's flat at a critical moment.
Things were never the same: Sarah turned cold and he retreated, bitter. Like Henry when they meet in the park, in the rain (it rains a lot in this film), he feels cheated by Sarah's new love, too.
It's an unusual film, because you probably won't like any of the main characters much, and the ending is perilously close to a TV soap opera.
However, since much of the film happens inside Maurice's mind, director Neil Jordan does a remarkable job in bringing this piece to life.
