Unfaithful (2002 film)

Unfaithful is a 2002 American erotic thriller film produced and directed by Adrian Lyne and written by Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr., adapted from the Claude Chabrol film The Unfaithful Wife (1969). Starring Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Olivier Martinez, and Erik Per Sullivan, the film follows a couple (Lane and Gere) living in the suburbs of New York City whose marriage is jeopardized when the wife embarks on an affair with a stranger (Martinez) she encounters by chance.

Unfaithful was theatrically released by 20th Century Fox in the United States on May 10, 2002, and was screened at the 37th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on July 8, 2002. The film was a box office success, grossing $119.1 million against its $50 million production budget. Despite mixed reviews from critics, Lane received critical acclaim for her performance. Lane won the Satellite Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama at the 7th Satellite Awards, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress at the 75th Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama at the 60th Golden Globe Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role at the 9th Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress at the 8th Critics' Choice Awards. The film was Adrian Lyne’s final directorial effort for 20 years until Deep Water (2022).

Plot

Constance "Connie" and Edward Sumner have a generally happy marriage together and live in upscale Westchester County, New York with their eight year old son, Charlie.

While shopping in SoHo, the wind knocks Connie into a young, handsome Frenchman named Paul Martel and they fall over. Paul then invites Connie into his apartment, where he cleans and ices her knee and then places his hand on hers. Paul insists that Connie takes a book before she leaves, addressing a passage about seizing the moment. When Connie returns home and opens the book, she discovers Paul's phone number inside of it.

Connie later calls Paul and he invites her back to his home; they flirt again and on her third visit, they dance and have sex.

Soon, Connie keeps on finding excuses to continue seeing Paul and Edward becomes suspicious when he notices her satin lingerie and catches her in a lie. Later on, Edward fires an employee for perceived disloyalty and the employee, who witnessed Connie and Paul kissing in a diner, tells Edward to look at his own family. This inspires Edward to hire a private investigator to spy on Connie and he's devastated to see photos confirming her adultery.

One day, Connie forgets to collect Charlie from school, realises her wrongdoing and attempts to call Paul to end their affair. With the phone call being unanswered, she tries leaving him a voicemail but is interrupted by Charlie. She then drives to Paul's home to end their affair in person, but instead spots him with another woman. After attacking Paul in a library, she angrily confronts and questions him about how many other women he's seeing. Paul claims the other woman is just a friend and nothing more, but Connie doesn't buy it and tells him that their affair is officially over. She then storms out of Paul's apartment but he catches up with her and forces himself upon her. Eventually, Connie succumbs to Paul and they have makeup sex in the hallway.

Afterwards, Edward arrives, narrowly missing Connie. Paul lets Edward into his apartment and while the pair discuss about Connie, Edward discovers Paul's messy bedsheets and a snow globe that he gifted her on his shelf. Overcome with rage, he brutally hits Paul twice over his head with it, fracturing his skull and killing him. While Edward cleans up the evidence, he overhears a tearful voicemail from Connie ending her affair with Paul, erases it and puts the latter’s body in the trunk of his car before dumping it in a landfill.

The next day, New York Police Department detectives find Connie's number in Paul's home and visit the Sumners, after his estranged wife has reported him missing. Connie is surprised to learn that Paul was married but falsely claims that she barely knew him. The NYPD return when his body is found and question Connie again and after they leave, she breaks down crying.

At the dry cleaner, Connie discovers the photos of her and Paul in Edward's laundry and at a party that night, she discovers her snow globe back in their collection. When she confronts Edward, he responds by telling her that he knew about her infidelity from day one and then breaks down while telling her how hard he worked to give her and Charlie a better life, accuses her of being ungrateful and throwing away a hardworking husband and a happy family for an affair, before telling her that he hates her and that he wanted to kill her instead of Paul.

Days later, Connie discovers a hidden compartment in the snow globe, where years prior, Edward placed a photograph of them and an infant Charlie, with a message reading: ″To My Beautiful Wife, The Best Part Of Every Day!″. Realising how much he loved her, she burns the incriminating photos of her and Paul. Edward says that he will turn himself in, but she objects and they return to a normal life together.

Returning home one evening, Edward stops at a red traffic light. Connie falls into an escape fantasy that they could leave the country to adopt new identities. While consoling her as she cries, it is shown that Edward has parked near a police station.

Cast

Richard Gere as Edward Sumner
Diane Lane as Connie Sumner
Olivier Martinez as Paul Martel
Erik Per Sullivan as Charlie Sumner
Željko Ivanek as Detective Dean
Dominic Chianese as Frank Wilson
Kate Burton as Tracy
Chad Lowe as Bill Stone
Gary Basaraba as Detective Mirojnick
Erich Anderson as Bob Gaylord
Myra Lucretia Taylor as Gloria
Michelle Monaghan as Lindsay
Margaret Colin as Sally
Lisa Emery as Beth
Michael Emerson as Josh
Damon Gupton as Other Businessman
Joseph Badalucco Jr. as Train Conductor

Production

Development

According to actor Richard Gere, an early draft of the screenplay presented the Sumners as suffering from a dysfunctional sexual relationship, which gave Connie some justification for having an affair. According to Gere and director Adrian Lyne, the studio wanted to change the storyline so that the Sumners had a bad marriage with no sex, to create greater sympathy for Connie. Both men opposed the change; Lyne in particular felt that the studio's suggestions would have robbed the film of any drama: "I wanted two people who were perfectly happy. I loved the idea of the totally arbitrary nature of infidelity." The Sumners' relationship was rewritten as a good marriage, with her affair the result of a chance meeting.

Pre-production

During preproduction, the producers received a videotaped audition from Olivier Martinez, who was selected for Paul. His character was portrayed as French once Martinez was cast. Lyne said, "I think it helps one understand how Connie might have leapt into this affair—he's very beguiling, doing even ordinary things." Once cast in the role, Martinez, with Lyne's approval, changed some of his dialogue and the scene in which he first seduces Lane's character, while she is looking at a book in Braille. According to Martinez, "The story that was invented before was much more sensual, erotic, and clear.

George Clooney turned down his role to star in Ocean's Eleven. Jennifer Lopez was offered the role of Connie, but turned it down; she felt that the script "wasn't great". In a 2025 interview with Howard Stern, Lopez said she regretted that decision, admitting it still 'haunts' her. She explained that although the script wasn't good, Lyne's direction made it great. Lyne cast Diane Lane as Connie after seeing her in A Walk on the Moon. Lyne also wanted Gere and Lane to gain weight to portray the comfort of a middle-aged couple. In particular, he wanted Gere to gain 30 pounds and left donuts in the actor's trailer every morning.

Lyne asked director of photography Peter Biziou, with whom he made 9½ Weeks, to shoot Unfaithful. After reading the script, Biziou felt that the story was appropriate for the classic 1.85:1 aspect ratio because it "so often has two characters working together in the frame". During preproduction, Biziou, Lyne, and production designer Brian Morris used a collection of still photographs as style references. These included photos from fashion magazines and shots by prominent photographers.

Filming

Initially, the story was set against snowy exteriors, but this idea was rejected early on. Principal photography began in New York City on March 22, 2001, and wrapped on June 1, 2001, with Lyne shooting in continuity whenever possible. During the windstorm sequence where Connie first meets Paul, it rained and Lyne used the overcast weather conditions for the street scenes. The director also preferred shooting practical interiors on location, so the actors could "feel an intimate sense of belonging", Biziou recalls. The cinematographer also used natural light as much as possible.

Lane had not met Martinez before filming, and they did not get to know each other well during the shoot, mirroring the relationship between their characters. A full four weeks of the schedule were dedicated to the scenes in Paul's loft, which was located on the third floor of a six-story building on Greene Street. Biziou often used two cameras for the film's intimate scenes to reduce the number of takes that had to be shot. The studio did not like the film's "enigmatic" ending, which they felt failed to punish crimes committed by the characters. It imposed a "particularly jarring 'Hollywood' final line", which angered Gere. Fox preferred the ending where all the moral and narrative issues were tied up.

Following negative reactions from test audiences, the studio reinstated the original ending; saying he intentionally "wanted to do a more ambiguous ending, which treats the audience much more intelligently".

Reception

Box office

Unfaithful was released in 2,617 theaters in the United States on May 10, 2002, grossing US$14 million on its first weekend, with an average of $5,374 per screen, ranking in second place behind Spider-Man. It made $52 million in the U.S. and Canada, and a total of $119 million worldwide, well above its $50 million budget.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 50% based on 165 reviews, with an average rating of 5.80/10. The consensus reads, "Diane Lane shines in the role, but the movie adds nothing new to the genre and the resolution is unsatisfying." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100, based on reviews from 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "C+" on scale of A to F.

Paul Tatara of CNN wrote that he saw the film's audience "chuckling at all the wrong times, and that's a bad sign when they're supposed to be having a collective heart attack." Owen Gleiberman of EW gave the film an "A−", praising Lane for "the most urgent performance of her career...a revelation. The play of lust, romance, degradation, and guilt on her face is the movie's real story." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Instead of pumping up the plot with recycled manufactured thrills, it's content to contemplate two reasonably sane adults who get themselves into an almost insoluble dilemma." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Lane was "inside her character...her initial half-distrustful tentativeness, her later sensual abandon or her never-ending ambivalence...living the role." Joe Morgenstern of the WSJ wrote that the film was "basically a chamber piece" with "no inclination to make a mockery of anyone." He liked how Lane played her character as "a mystery to herself, and disinclined to seek a solution." Jami Bernard of New York Daily News thought the film was "deliberately unerotic" and "an honest movie about dishonesty", showing "how seemingly unexpected instincts lie dormant." He praised Lane's "intricate performance", and liked how the film did not "stoop to cheap psychoanalysis and must be commended for a bravely ambiguous ending."

Stephen Holden in The New York Times praised the "taut, economical screenplay" that "digs into its characters' marrow (and into the perfectly selected details of domestic life)." He liked how the film's "visual imagination hovers somewhere between soap opera and a portentous pop surrealism." Mike Clark of USA Today gave it 3½ out of four, writing that Lane "reaches a new career plateau with her best performance since 1979's A Little Romance." Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post wrote that the film left him feeling "dispirited and grumpy: All that money spent, all that talent wasted, all that time gone forever, and for what? It's an ill movie that bloweth no man to good." David Ansen of Newsweek wrote that the film "shows what a powerful, sexy, smart filmmaker Lyne can be. It's a shame he substitutes the mechanics of suspense for the real suspense of what goes on between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife." Andrew Sarris, of the New York Observer, wrote it was "escapism in its purest form, and I am willing to experience it on that level, even though with all the unalloyed joy on display, there's almost no humor," concluding it was "one of the very few mainstream movies currently directed exclusively to grown-ups".

Accolades

The studio campaign's theme consisted of what the studio called the film's "iconic scene": Constance recalling her first tryst with Paul as she takes a train home. According to Tom Rothman, chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, "That scene captured the power of her performance. It's what everyone talked about after they saw her." Four days before the New York Film Critics Circle's vote, Lane was given a career tribute by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. A day before that, Lyne held a dinner for the actress at the Four Seasons Hotel. Critics and award voters were invited to both. Lane won the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle awards and was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Actress, losing the latter to Nicole Kidman in The Hours. Entertainment Weekly ranked Unfaithful the 27th on their "50 Sexiest Movies Ever" list.