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Beautiful, moving film.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

"I'm bored with my husband." "I'm bored with my life." "Let's have sex like teenagers." "Sweet."Welcome to "true love," _End of the Affair_ style. No indication of how the lead characters came to actually "love" each other, or what that "love" consisted of besides sex or creepy obsessive jealousy.The "twist" when it comes is underwhelming, to say the least, and involves retreading material that was dull the first time, and depends on the trite inability of the estranged hormone-weasels to actually TALK to each other. That's true love right there, folks.But hey, being a creepy obsessive stalker pays off, which is {sarcasm}an awesome moral to impart{/sarcasm}. Or rather, it would pay off for more than a brief interlude if it weren't for the glaringly obvious Chekov's gun being fired. The predictable denouement that follows rambles rather interminably, right to a saccharine beatification and cheap attempt at a metaphysical love/hate relationship with God. Meaningful, see?This movie wants to be a self-indulgent tragedy, but it's just tragic.

This film is the type of period romance film I dislike. It's all so sad and emotional, with the loud overbearing score intended to make you truly feel. It's all obnoxious. The performance are good enough, but none of them resonate that strongly because of the very pat direction and the incredibly vapid writing. It's all so clichéd, it's the reason these sort of films don't age very well and the reason why many (like me) don't look forward to them. I'm surprised Moore got a nomination for this, she's just not up to par for the Oscars. Easily her weakest nomination. I can't say I recommend this at all, it's just not up to very high standards and not very entertaining.

I never thought the movie would turn out so well.I loved the acting of Juliane Moore and the simple fact that at the end of the movie you are left with a cherished memory of a movie.The way the story is plotted is also amazing. The story kind of unfolds from an ending - kind of keeping with the title.I loved the fact that the movie doesn't end cheesy.The chemistry between the lovers portrayed is absolutely amazing in that you take over the characters and experience their heated romance.Each character is well portrayed and the same for a solid purpose contributing to the story.Its a good inspiration for all who stand for what they believe in and exemplifies it correctly.

There are faces that cameras like. Ralph Fiennes, for example, in any movie you watch him, whether he is a psycho killer ("Red Dragon") or Voldemort himself ("Harry Potter"), he looks good. If the camera loves you, you don't need to worry because at the end of the day everything will be okay, and I say this because I've never thought of him as a great actor. Again, the camera loves his face but that face says nothing to me. Even more interesting, I've never seen him hit the right chemistry with a female co-star; not with Jennifer Lopez in "Maid in Manhattan", not with Rachel Weisz in "The Constant Gardener". Here, in Neil Jordan's "The end of the affair", the chemistry is not the best with Julianne Moore, but we feel the overwhelming love the movie is trying to express. Has it got to do with other things? Julianne Moore, undoubtedly one of America's best contemporary actresses and one that can do just about anything, plays Sarah Miles, the wife of Henry Miles (Stephen Rea) who falls in love with Maurice Bendrix, the character played by Fiennes.This is the basic establishment of the film, which will revolve around these three characters in what we could define as an 'exploration'. Jordan, who adapted Graham Greene's homonymous novel in a very ambitious script, is great at playing with expectations. The viewer never quite knows when things are occurring and if they are truly occurring: characters wear the same clothes most of the time, scenes and conversations are repeated from different perspectives and flashbacks come out of nowhere. From the very first scene, Roger Pratt's cinematography suggests quite a dreamlike mood; and Michael Nyman's intense score accentuates it. So Jordan develops the characters, makes them talk, shoots them making passionate love in sex scenes that say a lot, works heavily on the looks and everything turns slow, very slow so we can understand this 'affair'; but nothing is ever boring. To contribute to the definition of 'exploration', the film introduces a private investigator as a major secondary character (played by Ian Hart) as both Sarah's husband and her lover in different occasions attempt to investigate her. Turns out Sarah is a woman with a very profound inner world, that translates differently on the outside.This ambivalence is the key of Moore's brilliant performance, and in a film with very few of those we would call moments, she composes a human being we want to understand and we finally do because Moore and the movie gladly help us. There is one scene, maybe the film's only 'moment', in which a siren sounds and Sarah has to leave Maurice. Pay attention at Moore in that precise moment, at everything she does and says before concluding in one simple word: "Yes". What she does can't be described because it must be experienced; and that whole scene in which Fiennes shines like man filled with love, is a scene I'd like to be able to watch frequently as it occurs to me with scenes in movies that represent pure, perfect acting (I recall one scene with Winona Ryder and Cher in "Mermaids"…do you remember?).The portrayal of Stephen Rea as Sarah's husband Henry is also crucial, because his character needs to appear as completely naive and insubstantial, and it's not easy to sustain that image for two hours. Rea really seems like an anonymous guy in the world. Fiennes' work on the other hand expresses the monumental love I was just talking about. His character is a writer, and as Sarah's lover, he finds a new meaning for love every day, and astonishes her with how he puts it in words. Henry and Maurice are two jealous men, of the same woman; and it will be the writer who will at one point tell Henry: "Lovers are jealous, husbands are ridiculous", resuming in this way their fundamental difference. I still haven't talked about God; about another part of the definition of 'exploration' that is related with exploring the faith. It is not a minor subject of the movie and it's implicated in some of the things I've said in this review, but I'll leave it for you to discover that plot line and relate it with the things I admired about this very ambitious piece. A piece you could see as a story about an affair, as a tale about love, as a character piece, or more concretely expressed and interesting: the story of two men united by the love they felt for the same woman. Would you go see a film promoted like that? Everything is possible.