Louis Malle’s English-speaking film, Damage, based on Josephine Hart’s steamy best-seller, with a bare script by playwright David Hare, revolves around that distinctly French concept, menage a trois.
Grade: B (*** out of *****)
Jeremy Irons plays British Stephen Fleming, a cool, always in control, junior minister, groomed for a better position in the parliament.
Stephen is happily married to a nice and loyal wife (Miranda Richardson) and the father of two children.
That is until he meets at a party Anna (French actress Juliette Binoche), the fiancée of his son (Rupert Graves). Before long–it literally takes one look–Stephens engages in an obsessively passionate affair with Anna.
Stephen tries to confess to Martyn and Ingrid, separately, but in the end, he does not do it. He phones Anna, but hangs up when Martyn answers.
Anna sends a key to Stephen’s office, with the address of a flat where they can meet. She tells Stephen that she could not marry Martyn without being with him. They meet at the flat and begin another tryst.
However, Martyn, having discovered about the flat by chance, finds them in bed. Stunned, he accidentally falls over a railing to his death. A devastated Stephen clutches him while Anna leaves the place silently.
Stephen’s affair is exposed and becomes a media frenzy. An anguished Ingrid questions whether he had ever loved her; she tells him she wishes they had never met. Stephen resigns his government position. Meeting Anna’s mother, he discovers Anna is staying with her, but he and Anna are silent in their last meeting.
Stephen, leaving his wife and daughter, retires to a rented room in a southern European town.
In narration, he reveals that he saw Anna only once more, in passing at an airport, and that she now has a child with Peter. Stephen stares at a huge blowup on his wall of a photo Martyn gave him of Stephen, Anna and Martyn together. He ends with a calm note: “She was no different from anyone else.”
Like The Lover, Damage has received tremendous publicity for its excessive graphic sexuality, which might erroneously enticed viewers to believe that the movie is an updated version of Last Tango in Paris, only set in London.
Irons and Binoche make ferocious love on the floor of her apartment, without ever uttering a word. Then they have sex fully clothed at street corners, outside of a church, in the midst of the day, and so on.
The tale is shot by director Malle in a detached, dispassionate manner–as if he didn’t care much about the emotional state of his characters. But by avoiding to take a more specific stance toward the tryst, Malle leaves the movie’s most pertinent issues unresolved.
For a father who admittedly loves his son, there must be a really good reason to engage in such a desperate liaison with his son’s fiancé.
David Hare’s script is faithful to the book, but too minimalist, thin-boned. At one point, Anna tells Stephen, “Damaged people are the most dangerous, because they know how to survive.”
Of the main quartet, Richardson, as the aggrieved wife and then suffering mother, renders the most emotionally devastating performance. It’s naked, brave, gut-wrenching performance that should be remembered at Oscars time.
The movie walks a very fine line between a serious psychological drama and a sordidly trashy thriller about the erotic obsession of a middle-aged man.
The sex scenes are by turns compelling and risible, seductively hypnotic and deliberately (or not) remote.
Visually, Damage is a carefully controlled art film par excellence. Malle lends the film a coldly elegant look, assisted by ace cinematographer Peter Biziou.
Too bad that as a director, he seems unable to decide whether to go in the direction of a Jackie Collins sordid potboiler or of a classic British literary novel.
The adulterous affair is just as mysteriously enigmatic at the story’s tragic ending as it was in the beginning, and in between the overture and conclusion, there are scenes that are simply flat and dull.
Commercially, the film was more popular in Europe than in the U.S., earning over $31 million at the global box-office.
Cast
Jeremy Irons as Dr. Stephen Fleming
Juliette Binoche as Anna Barton
Miranda Richardson as Ingrid Thompson-Fleming
Rupert Graves as Martyn Fleming
Ian Bannen as Edward Lloyd
Peter Stormare as Peter Wetzler
Gemma Clarke as Sally Fleming
Leslie Caron as Elizabeth Prideaux
Julian Fellowes as Donald Lyndsay, MP
Tony Doyle as the Prime Minister
Ray Gravell as Dr Fleming’s chauffeur.[3]
Susan Engel as Miss Snow
David Thewlis as a detective
Benjamin Whitrow as a civil servant
Credits:
Produced and directed by Louis Malle
Cinematography Peter Biziou
Edited by John Bloom
Music by Zbigniew Preisner
New Line Cinema (United States)
Release dates: December 9, 1992 (France) December 25 (USA)
Running time 111 minutes