Forever Mine (1999)

User Rating:

5.0/10   

Director:

Paul Schrader

Writer (WGA):

Paul Schrader (written by)

Release Date:

4 October 2002 (Spain)

Genre:

Thriller | Romance | Crime | Drama

Tagline:

He gave all for love.

Plot:

An affair between a cabana boy and the young wife of a sinister politician triggers a 16-year vendetta between the two men.

Plot Keywords:

Politician | Revenge | Vendetta | Plea Bargain | Beach

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Joseph Fiennes	...	Manuel Esquema / Alan Riply
Ray Liotta	...	Mark Brice
Gretchen Mol	...	Ella Brice
Vincent Laresca	...	Javier Cesti
Myk Watford	...	Rick Martino
Lindsey Connell	...	Stewardess
Sean Cw Johnson	...	Randy (as Sean C W Johnson)
Shawn Proctor	...	Cabana Boy
Russell Blackwell	...	Business Associate
Jocelyn Snowdon	...	Young Associate's Companion
Kevi Katsuras	...	Julie, Six Year-old Girl
Shannon Lawson	...	Emily, Julie's Mother
Ronald Knight	...	Older Male Executive
Ginger King	...	Older Male's Companion
Ted Simonett	...	Mr. Galen

MPAA:

Rated R for strong sexuality and violence, and for language.

Runtime:

115 min | France:112 min | Germany:113 min

Country:

UK | Canada | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Malaysia:18PL | Australia:MA | Argentina:16 | Germany:16 (video premiere) | Spain:13 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Miami, Florida, USA

Company:

Forever Mine (UK) Limited

Movie Connections:

References Goodfellas (1990)

Schrader's most demented ever (and yeah, I remember Rolling Thunder)

We all know that Paul Schrader is a sober son of the Dutch

Reformation Church. Still, I'd love to have a taste of the

crack he was smoking when he wrote this flaming lulu, a

painfully sincere and heartfelt tribute to undying love that

suggests Stanley Kubrick singing "Love Theme from Mahogany" a cappella.

Apparently an attempt to capture the spirit of Scott Spencer's novel "Endless Love" (so famously lost by Franco Zeffirelli), FOREVER MINE posits Joseph Fiennes

(he of the smoldering, gotta-have-you eyebrows) as a Miami cabana boy who messes with the wrong guy's wife--Gretchen Mol as the secretarial cutie who married

gnarly Mr. Big (Ray Liotta). Before you can say AGAINST

ALL ODDS, Mr. Big is coming down hard on Cabana Boy--only, in Schrader's world, this means more mutilations, burials alive, disguises, funny accents, and

villainous moustache-twirlings than in the entirety of

Shakespeare's CYMBELINE.

Schrader claimed he wanted to go back to the nineteenth

century. And indeed, the over-the-top melodrama suggests

a desperate attempt to flee fin-de-siecle irony. But it's

always a train wreck when cerebral directors try to let go of

their book-learning and Open Themselves to Feeling. FOREVER MINE suggests a cable-movie version of Robert Bresson's two wackadoody salutes to cute young boys, FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER and THE DEVIL PROBABLY; Fiennes greets Mol in a seedy motel room on which he has spray painted the words, "GIVE ALL TO LOVE." (That was the tagline of the movie's abortive theatrical run.) Like Kubrick in EYES WIDE SHUT, Schrader

tries to peel off his layers of coldness and ratiocination--but

any movie that opens with a quote from Walter Pater suggests that the filmmaker is more suited to analyzing

melodrama than expressing it.

For all the tropical gloss put on it by the great cinematographer John Bailey, FOREVER MINE has a giggle-inducing quality that's unique even to bad Schrader

movies. (In one scene, Fiennes leaves an ambivalent Mol

in her hotel room. As he walks away, he bumps his head

into a palm frond, stops, and seems to look back at the

palm frond. Fade to black. Does Schrader equate Douglas

Sirk with Ed Wood?) Now that he's expressed his inner lovesick sap, maybe Schrader can go back to who he really

is--a cold, alienated, God-haunted, overeducated freak

from Michigan who's also the greatest living writer of

movies.