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After `Affliction', one of the most heavy and pessimistic films in history, Paul Schrader needed a break. Not surprisingly his following film was much lighter, a thrilling melodrama concerning a love triangle packed with the director's familiar themes: insane passions, religious devotions, criminals with guilty conscience and revengeful obsessions.As many of Schrader's films, the complexity emanate from basic, pure character-driven performances. This film evolves into the form of melodrama, a genre never frequented by the director, who tried social, psychological, suspense, family, literary and even porno elements in his dramatic oeuvre. In this film, music plays a vital role, setting the tone and dictating the moods of the scenes and locates, therefore the melodrama label.Schrader's style has matured. His ascetic views doesn't stand in the frontline any longer. He's less hermetic. This newly acquired `simplicity' allows him to incorporate the complexity of his thoughts thoroughly in his mise en scene. The simpler and classic his films seem in the exterior, the bigger they hide. Like an aging magician whose tricks are less and less visible. Be that as it may, Forever mine, as his recent `Autofocus' is more fascinating to analyze than `Mishima', where form and content were the same thing.Forever Mine borrows elements of a number of crime classics: Scarface (Miami set-up), Carlito's Way (there's a line of dialogue from Alan to Javier concerning drug dealing and retiring for a second-hand car business), Vertigo (the double and some locale, like the corner bar with the bridge in the background) and an `entry through the kitchen door' in the Goodfellas fashion, funnily enough, with Ray Liotta waiting at the end of the travelling shot. Alan Riply's reappearance (Joseph Fiennes) as the eerie Sr. Esquema in the second half of the film is remarkably look-alike with De Niro's Vito Corleone is the Godfather sequel.Ray Liotta gives a powerful role as the cheated husband turned big shot, but unfortunately he doesn't have the main part. And that is maybe one of the reasons why the film flaws. The leading couple performances are weak and wooden, despite their efforts. The very classic script, containing lines that demand perfect delivery and timing, is almost in the edge of self parody. The actors fall into affectation and abundance of gestures instead. And as both Fiennes and Gretchen Mol fail to come out well of their characterization, the audience is left out of their drama, not rooting for them completely. Then one start asking oneself too many questions concerning the real motives of the hero and the reasons for the couple' actions.It's a shame that the film didn't follow the line of Ripley turning crazy with his obsession towards the woman. The scenes when he is in jail seem to suggest this track. Where he justifies his acts and everything makes sense to him and one cannot but pity him and being afraid of him. He could have been scary. Instead he ends up being a broken-hearted sucker, and as Schrader doesn't show us his transformation (there's a jump of thirteen years in the narrative) it's hard to believe in this new alias he has turned into.It has some very good lines (just think of `you'll miss your bus', `there's always another bus', `there's always another woman' dialogue said by Barbara Stanwyck and you name it) and a memorable killing in a solarium (as diverting as this subplot may be).Coming from Schrader, as interesting as this film may be for his diverse body of work, it's a good intentioned failure.
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