A slow, grim, melodramatic and strangely unemotional portrait of the decay caused by obsessive love. Jeremy Irons plays an up-and-coming government minister who falls hopelessly and passionately in love with his son's girlfriend (Juliette Binoche), a young woman happy both to supply his needs and remain engaged to his son. Tragedy inevitably strikes, and viewers so inclined can stay and watch the destruction of the lives of nearly all those involved. Rupert Graves, as the son, and Miranda Richardson, as the politician's wronged wife, are allowed brief moments to truly shine but Irons and Binoche generate as much chemistry, sexual heat - call it what you will - as a couple of fillets of cod on a fishmonger's slab. Glum.
