Updated: 21 June 1997

3/4

This was a beautiful film to watch. Full of beautiful people, in a glorious--at times surreal-- setting. It acknowledges this in its opening shots, which delight in Escher-like transformations that seduce the eye into believing each new revelation.

 The game of identity that gives the movie its substance compellingly propels the story. But substance is the issue here.

 This isn't, after all, a very nice story. The protagonists, despite the epic end to their affair, are still having an affair. The husband loves his wife, and is broken by the whole ordeal. Despite the revelations that ultimately win over Willem Dafoe's character, the not-english patient was still a man who pursued (then ran away from, then pursued) another man's [willing] wife.

 This film seems to want to be another CASABLANCA, but it doesn't--A: have the caliber of performances (though they are good), or--B: have as complex a story. This is odd, because the basics of CASABLANCA are very straightforward: old flame+new triangle+volatile setting=conflicts galore. Whereas PATIENT, on the surface, has multiple convolutions; none of those are dimensions of the main relationship.

 The performances in this movie are mostly good, but uneven. Ralph Fiennes is good, if nearly monotone. Kristin Scott-Thomas is, besides being beautiful and exotic (a British woman exotic!), persuasive but unanchored. Her motivations are always a bit vague. I can see this done purposefully through the first part of the film, but at the end of the film it is distracting. Does she have no feelings at all for her husband? No pity, remorse, or even anger over...his solution? Her emotions seem too...tidy, I guess. The best job in the film is probably that by the turbaned post-war love interest [can't remember his name!], though the storyline again falters in what could have been a more complex parallel to the primary narrative.

 There are splendid moments here. Brightest among these are the transitions in the film. Aural, visual, & [implied] olfactory components are all used as incredibly effective segues between present and past. That is thoroughly enjoyable. And to the director's credit, the mood those transitions create does not dissipate once the new setting is established.

 I said earlier that this is a visually stunning film, but that might be too limiting. It is a sensate film. One that has you feeling the grit as they are hit by a desert sandstorm, hearing the details of commotion in the streets of Cairo (that city has its own sound-captured here), and smelling, almost, the smoke of some flares that light a chapel ceiling in one of the film's nice surprises.

 After all this, then, it is just the core of the film--the primary love story--that lacks at its core what it lacks also in propriety. It is missing the strengths the movie itself has. It is not beautiful, and its transitions seem, until the very end, hollow due to a cold lack of emotion. The main characters rarely are felt to have a sense of themselves and each other beyond seemingly irrepressible hormonal desire. This is somewhat less of a problem with Ralph Fiennes' character. Perhaps.

 All in all, a good film to see for some wonderful technique. But the ending, epic & brilliantly done, is deserving of a better exposition. Not exactly a film I can recommend as character-building.