Unfaithful
運命の女
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A suburban wife's affair with a young bookseller, told with Diane Lane's train-ride flashback as the whole film in miniature.
Connie and Edward Sumner live comfortably in Westchester County, outside New York, with their eight-year-old son, Charlie, and their marriage is a generally happy one. On a windy day in SoHo Connie collides with a young Frenchman, Paul Martel, a dealer in books, and falls. He takes her up to his flat to see to her grazed knee and presses a book on her as she leaves; inside it she finds his number. She calls him. On her third visit they dance, and have sex.
Connie keeps inventing excuses to see him. Edward notices new lingerie and catches her in a lie. When he fires an employee for disloyalty, the man, who has seen Connie kissing Paul in a diner, tells him to look at his own family. Edward hires a private detective and is devastated by the photographs.
The day Connie forgets to collect Charlie from school, she resolves to end it. At Paul's building she sees him with another woman and confronts him in a fury; in the hallway he forces himself on her, and after a struggle she gives in. Edward arrives just after she has gone, and Paul lets him in. Seeing the unmade bed and, on the shelf, a snow globe he once gave Connie, Edward strikes Paul with it and kills him. As he cleans up, he hears Connie's tearful message ending the affair, erases it, and later dumps the body at a landfill.
Detectives come asking about Paul, whose estranged wife has reported him missing. Connie learns he was married, and says she hardly knew him. His body is found. Connie finds the detective's photographs in Edward's jacket, and the snow globe back on their shelf. Edward breaks down, calls her ungrateful, and says it was her he wanted to kill. Days later she finds hidden inside the globe an old photograph of the three of them and his words: 'To my beautiful wife, the best part of every day'. She burns the pictures of herself and Paul, and begs Edward not to turn himself in. Stopped at a red light, she imagines them fleeing abroad under new names, and he agrees. The car is waiting outside a police station.
Starring
Diane Laneas Connie Sumner
A suburban wife and mother in a comfortable marriage, who falls into an affair with a young Frenchman she meets by chance.
Connie Sumner’s story
A gust of wind in SoHo knocks Connie into Paul, a young Frenchman, who tends her knee and gives her a book holding his number. She calls him, and on her third visit they have sex; soon she is making excuses to see him. The day she forgets to fetch Charlie from school, she goes to end it and finds Paul with another woman; he forces himself on her in the hallway, and after a struggle she gives in. Questioned by detectives, she says she hardly knew him. Finding the detective's photographs in Edward's clothes and the snow globe back home, she understands. When she finds his loving message in the globe, she burns the pictures and begs him not to turn himself in. At a red light she imagines them fleeing abroad. They are outside a police station.
Richard Gereas Edward Sumner
Connie's husband, a devoted father who runs his own company, who discovers the affair and goes to see her lover.
Edward Sumner’s story
Edward notices Connie's new lingerie and catches her in a lie. When he fires an employee for disloyalty, the man tells him to look at his own family. He hires a private detective, and the photographs devastate him. At Paul's flat, seeing the unmade bed and the snow globe he once gave Connie, he strikes Paul with it and kills him. He hears Connie's tearful message ending the affair, erases it and dumps the body at a landfill. When she finds the photographs and the globe, he breaks down: he has worked for his family, she is ungrateful, and it was her he wanted to kill. He says he will turn himself in; she begs him not to. At a red light he agrees to her fantasy of fleeing abroad and comforts her. They are parked outside a police station.
Olivier Martinezas Paul Martel
A 27-year-old French book dealer in SoHo, single as far as Connie knows.
Erik Per Sullivanas Charlie Sumner
The Sumners' eight-year-old son, whom Connie forgets to collect from school one day.
Chad Loweas Bill Stone
An employee Edward fires, who has seen Connie with Paul and throws it back at him.
Why it matters
Unfaithful pays a woman's desire the respect of leaving it unexplained. Connie is not neglected, not unhappy, not married to a cold man; she meets someone, wants him, and the film follows the wanting with her. Then it turns, and asks what an affair does to the one who is betrayed. Edward, the gentle husband and father, kills a man in a moment and becomes the one keeping secrets. Adrian Lyne based the film on Claude Chabrol's The Unfaithful Wife, and Diane Lane won the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Actress and was nominated for the Academy Award. The ending, a family stopped at a red light outside a police station, leaves the real question open: whether a marriage that survives this has survived at all, or has only become a place for two people to hide.