End of the long, long, long affair

Ah, the misadventures of technological immediacy. I just watched perhaps the worst movie I’ve ever seen, Neil Jordan’s “The End of the Affair” of 1999. It was a free On-Demand TV option so me and my lady decided to kick back and watch the period romance. Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore star. The most memorable thing besides the mind-numbingly mopey dialog, is Fiennes’ bare behind and several booby-shots of Moore. The best is a cut to slow motion as Fiennes falls on the bed in exhausted sexual ecstasy, Moore’s boobs bouncing as the bombs of World War II fall in the London background.

The same music theme is also repeated over and over until you want to shoot yourself. It’s as if they ran out of money and could only pay the composer for one sheet of music. It’s fascinating too how this sentimental drivel a la “The English Patient” was so celebrated at the time. Reading over some of the old, glowing reviews made me wonder if I needed to puke into their warped pale. Did these movie critics watch the same movie! Goes to show you just how out of touch much of ’90s mainstream culture was. A bunch of self-absorbed adults whining about their love booboos — the Lewinsky affair meets the Battle of Britain. It’s so awful it’ll make you cry with laughter.