The Other Man

Directed by Richard Eyre

At Landmark Sunshine

Runtime: 90 min.

NO LONGER EXPLOITING the Jewish Holocaust as in last year’s The Reader, author Bernard Schlink reveals the essence of his trite, lurid imagination in The Other Man.This adultery melodrama—starring Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and Antonio Banderas—uses a Schlinkian time-shifting narrative to detail the lustful secrets and deceits in a longtime British marriage.

Director Richard Eyre isn’t as shameless as The Reader’s Stephen Daldry, so the attempts at moodiness are less hyperbolic—in fact, sleekly tasteful due to cinematography by Haris Zambarloukos, who also shot Mamma Mia! and is, apparently, a master of lighting. Nothing else in so refined.

When Neesom discovers his wife’s infidelity, the Internet snooping scene suggests the kind of voyeuristic snooping De Palma might have aced, Obsession-style. Instead, it leads to a montage of nude jpegs that are embarrassingly “shocking,” like something Patricia Clarkson would do. Eyre never finds in Linney’s nakedness a sensuality or sense of mortality comparable to what Penelope Cruz made memorable in Elegy.

As the pathetic, decent lothario, Banderas lacks sexual threat just as the script’s various miscommunications lack Pinter menace. Neesom is too rough-hewn for the conflicted cuckold. His best lines, “I want to meet him; I want to kill him,” shows he prefers action mode, as in last year’s superior Taken.