Movie Review:  LOVE AFFAIR
Copyright (c) 1994, Bruce Diamond
All rights reserved



        Ŀ
            LOVE AFFAIR:  Glenn Gordon Caron, director.  Robert    
            Towne & Warren Beatty, screenplay.  Warren Beatty,     
            Annette Bening, Katharine Hepburn, Garry Shandling,    
            Chloe Webb, Pierce Brosnan, and Kate Capshaw.          
            Warner Bros.  Rated PG-13.                             
        

          Nothing seems more natural this fall movie season than for
     Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, one of the most romantic
     couples in Hollywood, to remake one of Hollywood's most romantic
     stories, LOVE AFFAIR.  The 1957 remake of the 1939 classic was
     titled AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, starring Cary Grant and Deborah
     Kerr, which formed the nostalgic nougat center of 1993's unex-
     pected romantic hit, SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE.  Framed by "the town
     that never sleeps," New York City, the story's romantic climax
     involves a fateful rendezvous on the Empire State Building and
     the heart-rending aftermath.  Movie buffs familiar with LOVE
     AFFAIR's turn of events may find nothing new in this latest
     version, but for a new generation of movie-goers this film is a
     wonderful introduction to some good, old-fashioned romance, an
     element sorely lacking in many of today's love stories.
     
          Beatty manages to poke some fun at his past as a glamorous
     playboy, giving his character, Mark Gambril, just the right heft
     as -- guess what -- a celebrity playboy.  How apropos for Beatty
     to choose this material, metaphorically presenting his newly-
     domesticated image as Bening's husband and father of two children
     through Gambril, a testosterone-driven sportscaster who goes
     through women as rapidly and as insensitively as the young
     Beatty.  Gambril is domesticating himself by becoming engaged to
     a powerful TV producer (Kate Capshaw), but for all the wrong
     reasons.  He's getting married to clean up his act; because it's
     the *right* thing to do; because he's convinced himself that he's
     in love.  That is, until he meets Terry McKay (Bening) on a
     flight to Sydney, Australia.
     
          Terry's situation roughly parallels Mike Gambril's, sans the
     sowing-wild-oats past.  Engaged to a powerful business tycoon
     (Pierce Brosnan), Terry is unsure of herself and unsure of her
     love.  Musician by avocation and vocation, she helps make ends
     meet by decorating her fiancee's various homes and offices around
     the world.  She's little more than a decoration herself, or so
     the screenplay implies, which nicely serves as a metaphor for her
     image with the shallower movie-goers who can't think of her as
     anyone else but Beatty's wife.  Bening's talent and solid film
     resum should be enough to dispel these perceptions, but it's
     hard to overcome the baggage that the name Warren Beatty still
     carries in the collective hive-mind of the audience.  These
     assumptions, as undeserved as they are, are belied by the skills
     of these talented actors, who also just happen to be two of the
     most charismatic screen presences working in film today.  Their
     flair, charisma, and off-screen relationship inform LOVE AFFAIR
     with a passion and affection that surpasses the sometimes-shallow
     screenplay.
     
          The script, by Robert Towne and Beatty, seems to be missing
     chunks of narrative, especially after Terry and Mike arrive back
     in New York, committed to meet three months later on the Empire
     State Building if their love is still true.  Those three months
     fly by, the scenes mostly filled with the lovers separately
     reprioritizing their lives and taking on new careers.  They
     become nurturers (he -- a football coach; she -- a music
     teacher), an obvious but appropriate metaphor for the nurturing
     nature that each one has awakened in the other.  What's missing,
     though, are the "break-up" scenes with their respective
     intendeds.  Assumed though these scenes are, actually presenting
     them would have given us further insight as to how profoundly the
     protagonists have affected each other.  Instead, we are left with
     lingering glances, lush music (courtesy of the never-boring Ennio
     Morricone), and Katherine Hepburn's "insightful" comparison of
     Beatty to an ugly duckling that doesn't know it's a swan.
     Hepburn plays Mike Gambril's aunt, a feisty 86-year-old woman who
     lives on a small Pacific island, dispensing bumper sticker wisdom
     between servings of tea and cake.  It's a disappointingly-
     scripted role for Hepburn's return to the screen after a 14 year
     absence, but once again, the actor is able to inform the role
     with warmth, humanity, and a sagacity beyond the words.
     
          While LOVE AFFAIR is a mixed bag, at best, Beatty and Bening
     have rarely been as rapturous as they are here.
     
     
     RATING:  6 out of 10
