A sophisticated mix of illicit romance and unconventional religion, from the Graham Greene novel, set in Second World War-time England. Writer-director Neil Jordan, working from sturdier source material than in, say, Interview with the Vampire or The Butcher Boy, gets little of the credit for the clever narrative structure, only credit for faithfully following it, with its flashbacks within flashbacks and its suspenseful and satisfying arrangement of puzzle pieces: how the affair first started, how it ended, why it ended (a very separate matter), where it went next, and again why, all recounted by a first-person narrator who commences with the ominous words, "This is a diary of hate." God, believe it or not, becomes an important character in the second half, and He proves Himself as awesome and awful a figure as you ever could have imagined. The device of the purloined diary (not the narrator's diary) is a shabby storytelling expedient, but the immediate result of it -- re-seeing a sequence of events from a second point of view -- more than justifies it. This is in most ways an old-fashioned, bookish, craftsmanly character piece, and you could in all good conscience take your grandmother to it if not for the graphicness of the bed-top action between Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore. Jordan (to give credit where due) has succeeded in finding some fresh angles on that overphotographed activity, and he quite outdoes himself in staging the bomb blast that sharply reroutes the destinies of our lovers. The movie perhaps wears its seriousness (its lugubriousness, even) a little too much on its sleeve, with its funereal color scheme, and the intense monotony of Michael Nyman's music, and the strictures on the actors to speak exclusively in tones appropriate to a hospital corridor. But all of this serves to sustain a seamless mood -- not a bad thing, nor an easy thing. Stephen Rea, Ian Hart, Sam Bould. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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