EW TEOTA Article

November 19, 1999

Affair to Remember
Oscar nominees, adultery, wartime romance, oh my! Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore find each other in Neil Jordan's very grown-up "The End of the Affair."

By Rebecca Ascher-Walsh

As far as blind dates go, it's not the most obvious setup: one Irish screenwriter- director, best known for thrillers about sexy vampires and transvestites; a dashing British actor who came to fame portraying a Nazi; a red-haired American with a knack for playing porn stars; and a most Catholic, quite dead author. And yet this is the cast of characters director Neil Jordan ("The Crying Game", "Interview With the Vampire") and Sony Pictures are gambling on in the adaptation of Graham Greene's 1951 ode to tormented love, "The End of the Affair", starring Ralph Fiennes ("Schindler's List", "The English Patient"), Julianne Moore ("Boogie Nights"), and Stephen Rea ("The Crying Game"). The story, which centers on a writer (Fiennes) obsessed with his married lover (Moore), is an examination of marriage, adultery and theology. Set against the backdrop of London during World War II, the quiet, character-driven film is something of a surprise coming from Sony, which lately has been rolling out more than its share of teen-oriented flicks, reaping the rewards of Adam Sandler's "Big Daddy" and Martin Lawrence's "Blue Streak" (and failing with more mature fare like "Random Hearts" and "Jakob the Liar.")

"It's a period piece, and it's tremendously adult in its concerns," says Jordan of his movie. "You never know whether anyone out there will say 'Yes, I get it.' So the question, really, is who's going to see it?"

Box office gold may be a question mark, but with an Oscar-rich pedigree (Fiennes, Moore and Rea are former nominees; Jordan won for his "Crying Game" screenplay), the Academy will certainly consider this "Affair," which is an improvement on the sentimental 1954 adaptation with Deborah Kerr.

Five years ago, Jordan was unaware of that version when he discovered that Sony owned the rights to Greene's novel, and approached the studio about adapting it. Three projects stood in his way ("Michael Collins," "The Butcher Boy" and the dismally reviewed "In Dreams"), but "when I finished the 'In Dreams' thing and it didn't go that well, I threw myself into this," says Jordan, 49. Within two months, he'd written the screenplay. "It was a lovely time. The material was great, and Greene is dead, so he wasn't around to punish me." Jordan adhered closely to the book's plot, although he toned down some of the religious pondering -- "tough for a modern audience," he says -- and played with the fate of Moore's character.

With a polished draft in hand, Jordan took Fiennes out to dinner to discuss the part of Maurice Bendrix, the stricken writer who narrates the first half of the story. "I couldn't think of a better Graham Greene protagonist," the director says of Fiennes, 36. "He embodies that disenchanted character." Fiennes, on the other hand, wasn't immediately sold. "I suppose he was worried about the fact that [after] 'English Patient,' it would feel like a repetition, and I was worried about that too," says Jordan. But Fiennes took a shine to the director. "Neither of us is always socially at ease," says the star, who adds that Bendrix is "a tortured character, and I love that."

Also reluctant was Rea, who at first turned down the part of Moore's repressed and cuckolded husband. "You're asking an actor to play a man who is dull, who never even gets the chance to be angry," says Jordan, who, after launching Rea's career in '92's "The Crying Game," has gone on to make seven more films with the actor. "I was happy I had a relationship with Stephen that went back a long time so I could say, 'Look at it again'." Adds Rea, "I said yes eventually, but it took me a while." One reason for reconsidering: After starring as the older lover in this fall's "Lolita"-like "Guinevere," "I was interested in playing someone with such a repressed sexuality, when I had just played someone who is so overtly sexual."

Moore, on the other hand, was quite ready to jump on board as Sarah Miles, the story's guilt-ridden adulteress. She had followed Jordan's project in the English papers while filming "An Ideal Husband" in London, and pleaded to be allowed to read for the part. Jordan, who was busy editing "In Dreams" at the time, had to cancel their meeting, and Moore returned home to New York, where she lives with her boyfriend, writer-director Bart Freundlich ("The Myth of Fingerprints"), and their toddler, Caleb. "I wrote Neil a letter saying how moved I was by the script," she recalls. Two months later, however, when Jordan asked her to fly back to London and audition, Moore was feeling ambivalent. "It was the first time I had left my son, who was 9 months old. I was still nursing, and it was all I could talk about. I was really compelling at the time."

[A quick note from Nic: They made an error in this half. Ian Hart in fact plays the detective, Parkis, while Jason Isaacs plays Father Smythe.]

When Moore finally arrived on the London soundstage in October '98, to test with Fiennes, she was also "terrified" that she wouldn't do well after begging for the audition. The terror only worsened as she realized the scene was calling for some tears, and she wasn't coughing them up. "I'm going along thinking 'I should be crying, and I'm not crying, I've sunk my battleship'." Ironically, Moore's dry-eyed take won her the part. "The solution of a lot of the actresses [who read] was for the tears to flow, and she didn't," Jordan remembers. In addition, Moore's English accent was dead- on. "The Englishness of the character was there. She got this unliberated woman." Fiennes agreed. He says Moore, now 38, "was the oldest of the actresses, and the only American. But she had a maturity, and her look for the part was just right."

In February, Fiennes, Moore, Rea and Ian Hart ("The Butcher Boy"), who plays a priest, gathered in London for filming. The actors spent a week rehearsing, with Jordan making last-minute changes to the script. At Fiennes' request, he incorporated a scene from the book where the simmering Bendrix finally explodes, railing against the priest. The director also added a moment where Fiennes' character puts shoes on Moore's feet. "There was something missing, and it was a scene of tenderness," says Jordan. "I thought that rather than write a scene where a man is taking a woman's clothes off, he's putting them on."

While Jordan admits the "hothouse" intensity of the story occasionally carried over to the set, the director, who has frequently hired non-thespians like "The Crying Game"'s Jaye Davidson, says: "I don't think I've ever been in a situation where I've had four enormously practiced actors, and no other characters. Working with them was like working with Ferraris." Ferraris, that, occasionally, required an extra bit of TLC. Says Fiennes: "I'm naturally anxious, and when you've done your last take and you can never do it again, you think, 'Ah, should I have done it that way?' So you're obsessive. And Neil would take the obsession and share it'."

A codependent relationship, to be sure, but "the best kind," says Fiennes. "From now on, I'm only going to do tortured, obsessive period pieces in London in the rain."