Movie Impressions - IV

I did not have time last night to write about yesterday's Telluride movie, the British film "Enduring Love". This is one of those movies I probably would not have been tempted to watch had it not come with the recommendation stamp and the accessibility of Telluride. And I would, therefore, have missed a damn fine movie. The movie stood out among this year's selections for being the only decidedly introspective one. The direction is skilful enough to keep you from noticing the slow pace. Somehow, despite the lack of kinetic action, the movie builds up enough tension to make you hold your breath as you watch the serene and talky park scene that ends the movie. In fact the entire audience I watched the movie with exhaled a huge collective sigh as the tension was finally broken.

"Enduring Love" is framed as a stalker story, but with a twist: the stalker is homosexual. Within this context, the film ponders about the arbitrariness of the life-changing incidents, the butterfly effect, the cold biological basis of love, and of course, the stalker mindset. Rather than write my own synopsis of the story, I'll lazily point you to a nicely-written review of the Ian McEwan novel on which it is based.

The movie is fairly faithful to the novel and does not add any touches of cinematic brilliance. With source material this good, perhaps the decision to use a straightforward and restrained approach was a good one. I rate this 7/10; as a stalker movie and as a philosophical one it falls two notches below the utterly brilliant Audrey Tautou starrer "À la folie... pas du tout" (known, for some reason, by the very different English name "He loves me... he loves me not") — that movie gets a well-deserved 9/10.