Blurring the edges between reality and fiction, and in an era where we all live in public to a certain extent, A LOVE AFFAIR OF SORTS is a modern twist on a love affair in the digital age. The first feature film to be shot entirely on a flip camera, its narrative follows two lonely strangers in modern day Los Angeles, during the holiday season. The film begins with David (Director David Guy Levy), a painter, and Enci (Lili Bordan), a Hungarian nanny, who meet in a bookstore when he catches her shoplifting on his ever-present flip camera. As they start a tentative relationship, he captures it all on his digital camera, though nothing about the situation is as straightforward as it seems. Things are complicated further with the addition of Enci’s boyfriend, Boris (Ivan Kamaras), and David’s brutally honest friend, Jonathan (Jonathan Beckerman as himself, and unaware until the end of the shoot that the film he was in was fictional).
Chronicling the couple’s desire to be constantly filmed, and their need to really connect in the lonely landscape of Los Angeles at Christmastime, A LOVE AFFAIR OF SORTS takes a wry look at the way technology brings us together while also keeping us at a distance, and how it may have changed what it is to love and be loved.Warren Beatty isn’t quite Cary Grant in “Love Affair,” though he plays the same ladies’ man Grant made so fabulously debonair in Leo McCarey’s 1957 “An Affair to Remember.” (Charles Boyer also played this role, in 1939.) Surprisingly, he isn’t quite Warren Beatty either. Never has Mr. Beatty seemed less foxy or confident than he does playing out this star-crossed romance opposite his real-life spouse, Annette Bening, who has the once glamorous Deborah Kerr role (played earlier by Irene Dunne). A rule of thumb for male stars looking to set off flirtatious sparks: not with your wife, you don’t. Not on screen. Mr. Beatty and Ms. Bening generated plenty of electricity in “Bugsy,” but that film took a much less labored approach toward love. This time there’s not much else to talk about. And Mr. Beatty and Robert Towne have come up with a remarkably tongue-tied script. That’s amazing, since the earlier screenplays are loaded with arch rejoinders, and all anyone had to do was use them. “An Affair to Remember” was celebrated in “Sleepless in Seattle” for its weepy finale, but it’s most fondly remembered for state-of-the-art sophisticated banter.
In a role that brings Mr. Beatty to the brink of self-parody, he plays Mike Gambril, a one-time sports star with “a reputation for playing the field.” “Love Affair” even trots out familiar paparazzi shots of Mr. Beatty with various girlfriends (their images have been doctored) on television shows like “Hard Copy,” just to show he’s a famous Romeo. Certainly his well-documented attractiveness should have eliminated any need for the ridiculously coy cinematography that overprotects him here. Both stars are filmed in such a rosy, gauzy glow that a star actually seems to gleam off Mr. Beatty’s teeth in one scene. Both look better in the few scenes shot outdoors, in natural light. Conrad L. Hall, the usually first-rate cinematographer, is among several behind-the-scenes talents whose presence here ought to attest to Mr. Beatty’s skill at producing. He has rounded up the composer Ennio Morricone, the costume designer Milena Canonero and the production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti (who won an Oscar for “The Last Emperor”), but none of them rise to this occasion. “Love Affair” sounds schmaltzy and looks contrived, with uneasy direction by Glenn Gordon Caron that raises further questions about who, if anyone, was minding the store.
Then there’s the love affair itself. Not for Mike and Terry McKay (Ms. Bening) the sleek, black-tie shipboard romance seen in 1957; these two meet more awkwardly on an airplane, which crash-lands in the South Pacific, forcing them onto a comical-looking Russian cruise ship. Fans of this story know that the ship makes a stop so the leading man can visit a wonderful, elderly relative who knows all about love. This time, she’s played by Katharine Hepburn, who does not go gently into sweet little old lady roles.
Ms. Hepburn, who hasn’t made a major film since “On Golden Pond” and is ill served by this one, looks acutely uncomfortable playing an aunt of Mike’s who happens to live in a Tahitian paradise. Visited by Mike and Terry, she gives these lovebirds her benediction with an impossible speech about ducks and swans. She must also sit playing the piano while Ms. Bening hums thoughtfully and Mr. Beatty gazes admiringly at his sweetheart. This was bad enough when Ms. Kerr had to do it. It’s exactly the sort of thing that could have been expected to dry up in a 1994 version.
But no: “Love Affair” is faithful to its model in the most farfetched ways. So Mike and Terry fall in love at sea but then decide to have a cooling-off period back home, since they happen to be engaged to other people (Kate Capshaw and Pierce Brosnan, who seem perfectly fine alternatives). The waiting period is now three months, not six. But the appointed meeting place is still the Empire State Building, because Ms. Kerr once called it the closest thing to heaven. “It’s not the biggest building in the world anymore,” Terry says lamely, “but you can’t miss it.”
That sound you hear is the World Trade Center breathing a sigh of relief.
“Love Affair” then sends its principals back to their separate lives, where Mike has his lawyer, Kip (Garry Shandling), as his sidekick. The scene-stealing Mr. Shandling is more fun than anything else in the film, and he actually makes Mr. Beatty relax into his familiar, appealing self. Meanwhile, the usually peevish Terry beams with generosity while teaching schoolchildren in a disadvantaged neighborhood. You do not want to be around when Ms. Bening sings “The Farmer in the Dell” with this crowd, or when the kids show up at her hospital room in Santa outfits, serenading her with Christmas cheer.
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Hospital room? Well, this “Love Affair” carbon copies the traffic accident seen in 1957 and even gives Mr. Beatty straight Cary Grant dialogue for the story’s tear-jerking final scene. Mr. Beatty does best here when he’s finally given something lively to say, and Grant-style diffidence turns out to suit him very well. Cary Grant’s shoes aren’t fillable, but Mr. Beatty could have come closer if “Love Affair” had given him half a chance.
“Love Affair” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes very mild profanity and very slight sexual suggestiveness. LOVE AFFAIR
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Directed by Glenn Gordon Caron; written by Robert Towne and Warren Beatty, based on the 1939 film “Love Affair”; director of photography, Conrad L. Hall; edited by Robert C. Jones; music by Ennio Morricone; production designer, Ferdinando Scarfiotti; costume designer, Milena Canonero; produced by Mr. Beatty; released by Warner Brothers. Running time: 107 minutes. This film is rated PG-13. WITH: Warren Beatty (Mike Gambril), Annette Bening (Terry McKay) and Katharine Hepburn (Ginny).
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