‹ All movies
Unfaithful poster

Unfaithful

year 2002decade 00sdirector Adrian Lynegenre Dramagenre Thriller

124 minutes

Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Richard Gere Edward Sumner
Diane Lane Connie Sumner
Olivier Martinez Paul Martel
Erik Per Sullivan Charlie Sumner
Željko Ivanek Detective Dean
Dominic Chianese Frank Wilson
Kate Burton Tracy
Chad Lowe Bill Stone

Unfaithful | The Rewatchables

host Bill Simmonsguest Wesley Morris
Explore episodeClose episode

Producer credits not yet identified.

Roger Ebert's review

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:35:04Read transcript
  • Before the categories, the film is said to have had a $50 million budget and made $119 million worldwide.
  • Roger Ebert gave it three stars, quoted as praising the film for contemplating two reasonably sane adults in an almost insoluble dilemma instead of pumping up the plot with recycled manufactured thrills.

Most Rewatchable Scene

Paul's windstorm pickup of Connie; Connie's train ride after the first affair; lunch with friends; Edward killing Paul; Connie confronting Edward

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:43:25Read transcript
  • The first listed pick is the windstorm pickup: the Frenchman hits on Connie, gets her up to the apartment, and once she goes upstairs it is over; there is a wish that a wife would have declined and found a cab.
  • Connie's post-affair train ride, with the flashbacks and her expressions, is called a good one and number one.
  • The lunch with her two friends is liked as one of the best-written scenes, feeling like friends catching up while she has just had sex in the bathroom; the sequence is called peak Adrian Lyne, like an international-coffee commercial with sex in the middle.
  • Edward killing the French guy with the snow globe is another enjoyed scene.
  • Connie confronting Edward after finding the snow globe back in their house is picked, including his lines that he knew from the first day and wanted to kill her, not him.
  • The last half hour is called pretty good and the ambiguous ending is liked.
  • Edward's visit to Paul's SoHo apartment is walked through: a wide shot of him outside, Connie running out, and a bizarre interaction in which Paul is a dick, calls his life pedestrian and says the snow globe was a gift, leaving the killing half-justified.
  • Objection: Diane Lane would never have given her lover a gift from her husband that can be traced back to her; this is flagged for picking nits.

What’s Aged the Best?

Early-2000s SoHo; Paul's apartment; hiring someone to follow the wife; the dry-cleaner photo discovery; keeping French guys away from your wife

In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:48:41Read transcript
  • Early-2000s SoHo is liked, as a substitute for Fatal Attraction's meatpacking district.
  • Paul Martel's apartment is liked; research says Lyne pumped in so much smoke for the sunlit musty look that everyone filming there for a month got sick.
  • The apartment matches the Nine and a Half Weeks and Fatal Attraction style, and Lyne is said to live in one of those apartments, known from an interview with him.
  • The score is offered next and mocked: it feels cheaty, is likened to imagined lyrics about loins, is questioned as selling tissues or spritzers, and is said to sound like Claire of the Moon, one of the worst lesbian movies ever made.
  • Any scene where someone tells an older, scary-looking man to follow their wife is always good, made better because it is Uncle June.
  • Connie finding the photos in Edward's jacket at the dry cleaners is liked, with Lyne spinning the machines while her friend talks unheard.
  • A question: who hires a detective, keeps the proof photos in his jacket, and leaves it for his wife to take to the dry cleaners after meticulously cleaning the apartment for 19 hours? This is flagged for picking nits.
  • A lesson that aged well: keep French guys away from your wife; who has replaced the sexy Frenchman is debated, with Italians or a Spaniard floated.
  • Olivier Martinez does not do it for one participant, while that participant's wife and mother rate him 10 out of 10, prompting a Venn diagram joke about what gay men and straight women like.

What’s Aged the Worst?

Anyone cheating on Richard Gere; over-explained dialogue; pay phones; school-play scenes

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:53:49Read transcript
  • A mother's number one nitpick is offered: she is the biggest Richard Gere fan ever, once approached him at a New Canaan charity event, and cannot conceive of anyone cheating on him, likened to dunking on Michael Jordan seven times in a playoff series.
  • The mother is joked to be upset that she gets less podcast attention than the dad and sports, even though she taught reading and writing.
  • Dialogue where one character asks another "do you love me" is hated, compared with the "tell me I led a good life" ending of Saving Private Ryan.
  • The "Are you okay? I'm fine" exchange is singled out; the film walks up to what a marriage with an unspoken secret is like but has people say gibberish and explains too much, such as calling the nail salon, when looks would do.
  • Pay phones were a huge part of adultery movies; she has a cell phone in this movie yet uses a pay phone, and lacks one when she needs it most.
  • School-play scenes are never idyllic in real life, with parents fighting for seats and holding up camera phones.
  • School-play scenes reflect the biases of married white filmmakers with children; the handholding close-ups are noted, and the child playing a rabbit is read as a Fatal Attraction callback.
  • School plays, elementary and Little League games in movies are all hated, closing the aged-worst list.

Casting What-Ifs

Brad Pitt or Ryan Phillippe as Paul; Jennifer Lopez as Connie

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 01:06:59Read transcript
  • Brad Pitt and Ryan Phillippe were reportedly offered Paul before the role was made French for exoticism; everyone who likes the movie likes Olivier Martinez.
  • Cheating with someone of a different nationality might feel like an 80 percent cheat; another white guy would have hit Gere harder.
  • Jennifer Lopez was offered the role and turned it down because the script was not all the way there, and after Lane's nomination said she wanted to shoot her toe off.
  • Speaking as a J.Lo actor truther, one participant says she made the right choice: it is a particular movie-star part that works with Diane Lane or Foster, and J.Lo in the suburbs married to Gere would never stop being J.Lo.
  • The film never shows how the couple met; audiences may know Gere and Lane worked together before, and there is a wish to see Gere pick someone up without paying.
  • Lyne cast Lane after seeing A Walk on the Moon, calling her sympathetic when so many sexy women are tough and hard.

The Joey Pants “That Guy” Award

Željko Ivanek as the detective

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 01:12:14Read transcript
  • Margaret Cullen, as transcribed, is loved for her fire and was on The West Wing, but never totally made it.
  • The award goes to the actor playing the detective, transcribed as Zyko Ivanovich, a classic That Guy from Oz, School Ties and many Law & Order episodes who is in everything.

Recasting Couch

The couple's young son

In the discussion (1)
Approx. transcript time · 01:14:19Read transcript
  • The recast wanted is the little kid: a Gere-Lane child would be gorgeous, and the actor, recalled as a brother on Malcolm in the Middle, did not feel like their child despite being charming and funny.

Half-Assed Internet Research

Source film; Lyne's repeated takes; weight-gain request; smoke-filled apartment illnesses

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 01:15:06Read transcript
  • The film is based on the 1969 French film The Unfaithful Wife.
  • Lyne's repeated takes, especially for the sex scenes, were demanding and meant to break the actors down; by the end, per Lane, you're physically and emotionally shattered.
  • The strangeness of acting is noted, with hours of simulated sex until you crack, and the shivering in the first sexual encounter is praised.
  • Lyne wanted Gere and Lane to gain weight to seem like a comfortable middle-aged couple; both refused, and donuts left in Gere's trailer every morning did not take.
  • Per Gere, the smoke in the apartment blew out their throats and a doctor was on hand shooting people up with antibiotics for bronchial infections; Lyne is called the true madman compared with David Fincher.
  • Earlier, flagged as half-assed internet research: Lyne shot five endings after Fatal Attraction, the studio wanted the characters punished, Gere and Lane returned weeks before release to reshoot the car ending, and an alternate ending had him walking to the police station.

Apex Mountain

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 01:16:52Read transcript
  • Diane Lane is at Apex Mountain, 100 percent; it is nice that she finally got an awesome part.
  • Olivier Martinez is 'probably' there, unless it was when he won a fist fight with Halle Berry's new boyfriend, Gabriel Aubry.
  • Richard Gere, no way; Adrian Lyne, no.
  • Reading Braille as foreplay is floated as an Apex first and mocked from a blind person's perspective, like offering a spin in a wheelchair.
  • Killing someone with a snow globe is floated as a first, though it feels like there have been snow-globe murders before.

Picking Nits

Body carried out unnoticed; implausible murder and disposal; bad police work; wiping off prints; the elevator carry

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 01:18:20Read transcript
  • A mother's biggest nitpick after about 330 viewings: nobody notices Gere carrying a body in a rug out of a New York apartment, and a passerby even offers help.
  • Everything about the murder is dumb: why, how, and the disposal; Martinez is guessed at 6-2 and Gere 5-9, and a dead body would not fold into a rug that way.
  • Dumping the body at a landfill instead of burying it reflects the entitlement of well-off suburbanites.
  • The police were bad: DNA, a cleaned-up pool of blood, the wife's fingerprints, her phone number, and parking tickets out front; her parking-ticket lie is called decent.
  • Wiping one glass with his hand is a movie cliche; a real killer would need a montage of wiping everything.
  • Pushing a 200-pound body up when the elevator breaks down would be an Olympic event, beyond even LeBron James.
  • Earlier flag: Connie giving Paul her husband's gift is implausible because it is directly traceable to her.
  • Earlier flag: Edward cleans the apartment of blood and DNA for 19 hours but leaves the detective photos in his jacket.

Sequel, Prequel, Limited Series, or All-Black Remake

Only works as a movie or a one-season show

In the discussion (4)
Approx. transcript time · 01:21:38Read transcript
  • It would make a very good Netflix show about a seemingly happy couple and a wife beginning an affair, the kind a mother would watch.
  • Objection: that show is The Affair, which became terrible, though season one was good; it was reportedly made because Unfaithful kept airing on cable for 15 years.
  • Conclusion: it only works as a movie, a one-season show at most.
  • Ruth Wilson is an aside, called baffling and an imitation American.

Probably Unanswerable Questions

Paul did not have to die; Richard Gere is a conditionally good actor; claim self-defense; the marriage does not survive

In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 01:22:42Read transcript
  • Did Paul deserve to die? A case: he was a dick when Gere came to the door, opened the snow-globe bit, and could have looked sheepish; but did he have to die? No, it was a dumb reason to die.
  • The missing movie: a bad sex life, an affair that enlivens her, a husband who murders the lover, and a couple who hide it and use it to make their marriage kinkier, like two psychos in a John Waters movie.
  • Is Richard Gere a good actor? He is called a conditional good actor who takes many shots with low points per game, good with Julia Roberts, Winger and Andy Garcia, but hard to cast opposite, as with Foster in Summersby.
  • Where would you dump a body? The better move was to say he confronted the man and hit him in self-defense; claiming self-defense is relayed as a suggestion from Craig.
  • One participant would never kill anyone and does not want to be in that position.
  • The junkyard would not be the final choice; with that big house, the body could have been stashed under it.
  • What happens to the Sumners next? They are guessed to divorce within a couple of years because the marriage cannot survive; views differ on whether he turns himself in, and DNA means they would be caught anyway.

More from the conversation

Sponsor reads (Spotify, Heineken, TikTok) open the episode; the Heineken read promises a later answer on the best Heineken movie cameo, followed by a cold-open trailer for Unfaithful with critic blurbs.
Approx. transcript time · 00:00:00Read transcript
Wesley Morris is introduced as a former Grantland colleague who writes for the New York Times and hosts Still Processing, and who loves adultery and sex movies.
Approx. transcript time · 00:01:45Read transcript
Is Unfaithful the most overqualified Lifetime movie ever? Fatal Attraction is called the championship-belt holder with Unfaithful in the final four, and Beaches is proposed as the all-time title holder.
Approx. transcript time · 00:01:59Read transcript
The movie was picked to dive into Diane Lane's career; her performance is great even if the movie is not, and she is compared to a great athlete who never found the right team.
Approx. transcript time · 00:02:16Read transcript
Lane does not seem like an actress: an immense likeability rather than the goodness of Sally Field, Hilary Swank, Tom Hanks or Chadwick Boseman; her characters always think before they act and she overpowers the characters she plays, as with her Boston accent in The Perfect Storm.
Approx. transcript time · 00:03:57Read transcript
Lane works best in movies like this, Under the Tuscan Sun or A Walk on the Moon: sexualized, compassionate, with damage or baggage from the past; she was Oscar-nominated for this film. The damage she brings creates a protective sympathy.
Approx. transcript time · 00:05:28Read transcript
A tribute: a piece written about Chadwick Boseman shortly after his death is praised, and Boseman is said to have carried a dignity above his material.
Approx. transcript time · 00:07:08Read transcript
Lane's career history: A Little Romance with Laurence Olivier and a Time cover as a prodigy, then The Outsiders and Rumble Fish in 1983, then Streets of Fire and The Cotton Club as disasters.
Approx. transcript time · 00:08:06Read transcript
Roles Lane reportedly turned down or lost: the Rebecca De Mornay part in Risky Business, the mermaid in Splash, the Kelly McGillis role in The Accused, and Pretty Woman before Julia Roberts because of scheduling conflicts.
Approx. transcript time · 00:09:27Read transcript
Late-80s and 90s: The Big Town, Lady Beware and Lonesome Dove on TV, where she is said to have won an Emmy, then years of weak movies like Judge Dredd; she reportedly went for the Kelly Preston role in Jerry Maguire.
Approx. transcript time · 00:09:51Read transcript
Lane would not have made sense in most of those roles: The Accused perhaps, Risky Business possibly, Pretty Woman only in its darker R-rated early version, and Splash not at all because that character must be surprised by everything while Lane has a world-weariness.
Approx. transcript time · 00:10:48Read transcript
A Walk on the Moon started her revival, followed by The Perfect Storm and Hardball, described as a beloved terrible Keanu Reeves baseball movie with a nothing love-interest part, before Unfaithful in 2002.
Approx. transcript time · 00:13:38Read transcript
A half-remembered last shot of The Perfect Storm with Lane superimposed over the ocean is described, possibly misremembered, as Hollywood getting ready to reconsider her.
Approx. transcript time · 00:14:17Read transcript
An interview with Lane around Under the Tuscan Sun is recalled: she was kind and the same person in a hotel conference room as on screen.
Approx. transcript time · 00:15:18Read transcript
Lane's Oscar year: Nicole Kidman won for The Hours over Julianne Moore (Far from Heaven), Renee Zellweger (Chicago), Salma Hayek (Frida) and Lane; Julianne Moore should have won, Zellweger is a close second, and The Hours is disliked.
Approx. transcript time · 00:15:40Read transcript
Actresses who jump off the screen: Kathleen Turner for eight or nine years including Romancing the Stone, and Sharon Stone before Basic Instinct in Action Jackson and Total Recall.
Approx. transcript time · 00:16:40Read transcript
Asked who has that quality in 2020, Rachel Weisz is offered as a controversial pick; Britain has never produced a movie person with Lane's quality, except maybe Julie Christie, whose mystery made her impenetrable and who could not have made Unfaithful.
Approx. transcript time · 00:17:49Read transcript
Jennifer Aniston lacks Lane's damage and has tried to play Lane-type characters without it working; Kerry Washington had the quality for a few years, including in the Chris Rock movie I Think I Love My Wife, another French-movie remake.
Approx. transcript time · 00:19:13Read transcript
Ultimate Lane take: had she gotten the Ellen Pompeo part in Grey's Anatomy she would have made $20 million a year on TV with movies on the side; Meredith Grey is called insufferable and would be interesting if Lane played her.
Approx. transcript time · 00:20:38Read transcript
Lane could have been a daytime soap star with a pile of Emmys, though her edge is a little too hard; Jenny in Forrest Gump is another part that would have worked.
Approx. transcript time · 00:22:28Read transcript
How much luck goes into who becomes a star; a question whether anyone told Lane to dye her hair blonde, since most of the parts discussed went to blonde actresses.
Approx. transcript time · 00:23:09Read transcript
Heineken ad read answers the opening promise: the best Heineken use in a movie is Skyfall.
Approx. transcript time · 00:24:22Read transcript
Adrian Lyne saw something in Lane; his filmography is Nine and a Half Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, Lolita and Unfaithful, all about sex, bad choices and impulse, and he returns after an 18-year hiatus with a November film starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas.
Approx. transcript time · 00:25:04Read transcript
A 90-second Lyne recap: British commercial director; as if Claude Chabrol, whose film Unfaithful remakes, and Alfred Hitchcock had a baby raised in a whorehouse; one of the horniest directors ever, knocked as all flash, from the same school as the Scott brothers with editing built for audience seduction.
Approx. transcript time · 00:26:26Read transcript
Paul's smoky apartment with books, Braille reading and the slow coat removal is all seduction; the late Anne V. Coates edited the film, one of her best jobs, and on a fourth viewing the train-sequence choices that once offended now make sense.
Approx. transcript time · 00:27:45Read transcript
Lyne is a Hitchcock impersonator weaker than Brian De Palma or M. Night Shyamalan, not interested in psychology and dependent on screenplays; Lolita, Fatal Attraction and Nine and a Half Weeks are named as good scripts, and he pulls career-best performances, as with Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger.
Approx. transcript time · 00:28:18Read transcript
Lane and Kim Basinger are similar in different proportions; Lane seems like a fourth-grade teacher who wound up in a movie, like Rachel Ward, and has no showy Oscar-clip moment, acting through body language and facial reactions.
Approx. transcript time · 00:29:55Read transcript
Kim Basinger theory: born 40 years too late and should have peaked around 1946, in the Veronica Lake and Ava Gardner era, before Marilyn Monroe.
Approx. transcript time · 00:30:44Read transcript
Lyne's 1980s movies belonged to the VHS rental and early cable era, when such films pushed the envelope and had an outsized market share that faded by the mid-2000s once internet porn arrived.
Approx. transcript time · 00:31:45Read transcript
The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal is said to have ended the erotic thriller, with late-90s prudishness and then September 11th leaving no chance to reset culture's relationship to sex; watching such films in a theater also became stranger.
Approx. transcript time · 00:33:05Read transcript
Seeing Basic Instinct in a Worcester theater and Sliver in a theater are recalled; Sliver's $123.9 million 1993 worldwide gross is looked up to settle whether it was a hit.
Approx. transcript time · 00:33:55Read transcript
Studio fight over why Connie cheats: an early draft gave the couple a dysfunctional sex life, the studio wanted no sex at all to make her sympathetic, and Gere and Lyne insisted on a good marriage; Lyne is quoted wanting two perfectly happy people and the arbitrary nature of infidelity.
Approx. transcript time · 00:35:04Read transcript
Critique: the movie still cheats by making the suburbs seem too quiet and the couple bored, rigging it to root for the affair; the location between Connecticut and the Hudson Valley is unclear.
Approx. transcript time · 00:36:27Read transcript
Fatal Attraction is so embedded in Lyne's brain that the film is full of its references; the movie goes too far yet feels psychologically vacant, never answering why she does it.
Approx. transcript time · 00:37:39Read transcript
Gere's character being 15 years older recalls A Perfect Murder; combining A Perfect Murder and Unfaithful could make a better movie.
Approx. transcript time · 00:38:46Read transcript
Ending history, flagged as half-assed internet research: Lyne shot five endings after his Fatal Attraction experience; the studio wanted the characters punished; the car ending was reshot weeks before release; an alternate ending had him walking to the police station; Lyne chose the ambiguous red light outside the police station.
Approx. transcript time · 00:39:04Read transcript
A preferred ending: stop on the earlier scene where both freeze at passing sirens.
Approx. transcript time · 00:39:48Read transcript
Objection: nobody is honest about what the movie is about; a cheating movie does not need a death, the murder is badly done and unjustified, and everyone, including the lover with his dirty books, should suffer.
Approx. transcript time · 00:40:24Read transcript
Ad reads for Marvel's Avengers and TikTok, with an aside that the show has not yet done an Avengers episode.
Approx. transcript time · 00:41:51Read transcript
Richard Gere tangent, prompted by the aged-worst setup: he is called the greatest movie star who never did anything great, whose Julia Roberts run depended on her; a William Goldman book chapter is cited for Gere going 0 for 9 over eight years before Pretty Woman.
Approx. transcript time · 00:54:50Read transcript
Gere is handsome in real life rather than on screen, which is why he plays bankers and lawyers; American Gigolo, with its Blondie score, holds up but is Paul Schrader's work with Gere as a vessel.
Approx. transcript time · 00:56:13Read transcript
Gere is a necessary ingredient who shows how great others are, likened to Scottie Pippen: Debra Winger and Lou Gossett in An Officer and a Gentleman, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman; Runaway Bride is pretty good and Breathless is a family favorite.
Approx. transcript time · 00:57:48Read transcript
Internal Affairs is agreed to be Gere's best part: a low-life capable of seducing anyone, charming or psychopathic, the Gere wanted in seven other movies.
Approx. transcript time · 00:58:44Read transcript
More Gere: he is great and joyfully loose as the sleazy lawyer in Chicago despite the movie being badly assembled; The Hoax is liked; And the Band Played On features him as a dying Broadway director, a different performance.
Approx. transcript time · 00:59:55Read transcript
A wish to see Tarantino or Paul Thomas Anderson use Gere; the role in Unfaithful is a 1989 Michael Douglas part and Gere is doing a Michael Douglas impersonation.
Approx. transcript time · 01:01:21Read transcript
Craig is urged to watch Internal Affairs, with Laurie Metcalf and Andy Garcia fully going for it.
Approx. transcript time · 01:02:28Read transcript
Ad read for FanDuel Sportsbook with a Million Dollar Picks recap and a Chiefs-Chargers recommendation.
Approx. transcript time · 01:10:28Read transcript
Lane made smart choices knowing her limitations; blondes and classism kept her from megastardom; turning 40 let her transition into good middle-aged parts, unlike Melanie Griffith.
Approx. transcript time · 01:30:01Read transcript
A mid-2000s ESPN.com mailbag reader proposed the Diane Lane All-Stars for women over 40; in 2020 it would be the Angela Bassett All-Stars for over-60s, and Susan Sarandon's age (73) is looked up.
Approx. transcript time · 01:30:57Read transcript
Sign-off thanks Wesley for a weird movie, says two more of his episodes are coming later in the year, previews Easy A later in the week, and plugs Still Processing.
Approx. transcript time · 01:32:24Read transcript