FORBIDDEN PASSIONS: DAMAGE, INDOCHINE, LOVE FIELD
Love stories can be presented to us in all kinds of ways, and have been. For some, however, there's nothing that gets the blood racing quite like a forbidden love. Occasionally, this love breaks the law (incest), but mostly, it's against a society taboo. The problem can be, however, that the filmmaker is so worked up about the taboo that they forget to tell a good story. Three cases in point are Louis Malle's DAMAGE, Regis Wargnier's INDOCHINE, and Jonathan Kaplan's LOVE FIELD.
By default, DAMAGE is the most successful of these movies, since it at least is a halfway decent movie. This is no surprise, since it comes from a good source; Josephine Hart's novel, which told a good pulp story that was like watching a car accident - you know you shouldn't look, but you do anyway. But if you had asked who would be likely to be able to tell this story for the screen, one would hardly expect Malle and writer David Hare to be attracted to this material. And the problem with the movie is you're never quite sure what they're doing here.
As in the novel, the movie follows Dr. Stephen Fleming (Jeremy Irons), though he's unnamed in the novel. Fleming, on the face of it, would seem to have it all. He's a Member of Parliament, he's happily married to Ingrid (Miranda Richardson), he has two nice children, Martyn (Rupert Graves) and Sally (Gemma Clarke), and there's nothing wrong other than a vague unease with his life. Then one day, Martyn brings Anna (Juliette Binoche), his new girlfriend, to meet his father. Dr. Fleming is immediately and passionately obsessed with Anna, and she with him. Even as Martyn and Anna fall in love and become engaged, with the slight disapproval of Ingrid and the hearty approval of Ingrid's father (Ian Bannen), the two continue their affair, even though Anna insists she won't give up Martyn. She also warns Dr. Fleming that she's "damaged" - she had an incestuous affair with her brother, who later killed himself - and that "damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive."
You can certainly see where this is heading, but Hart, as I said, kept you gripped from start to finish. She told in in purple language, true, but also kept the plot trim and constantly moving. Malle and Hare, of course, have to slow things down a trifle, but they also act like they're above it all. I know this takes place in the upper crust of society, and to film it as soap opera would be too easy, but they err too far the other way. And then there's the matter of the sex scenes. These scenes were on their way towards earning the film an NC-17, until they were recut slightly for an R. Malle takes a matter-of-fact approach, but the consequence is the Stephen-Anna scenes don't come off as two people in the throes of passion, but of two animals doing what comes naturally. As LAST TANGO IN PARIS proved, you can show sex while avoiding a soap opera approach without becoming silly, and you'd think Malle, who's no stranger to taboo sex (PRETTY BABY, MURMUR OF THE HEART), would know that. But it comes off awkward here.
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