Commitment to Infidelity

By Greg Reifsteck

"If you believe in love at first sight, you never stop looking." -The movie poster tagline for Mike Nichols' Closer.

Two-timing, cheating mates sneaking around furtively in the dead of the night under the cover of darkness and deceit sells tickets; it always has and it always will. Or at least that's what the gang in Tinseltown seems to think, as evidenced by an ever-present wave of filmmakers pushing the infidelity envelope.

But is that obsession with infidelity just to sell tickets or is it a reflection of the way things in society really are? Is infidelity as commonplace as the movies portend it to be? If not, can such an illegitimate representation of the state of affairs (no pun intended) be damaging to society?

It is arguably a fact that, thematically, conflict is a necessary ingredient of good drama and effective comedy. Filmmakers have used many devices to promote that conflict, thereby helping audiences relate better to their onscreen alter egos - death (Love Story), distance (Casablanca), disaster (Titanic) are but a few. Even a touchy-feely romance director like Nora Ehpron had her beloved characters Harry and Sally get stuck in the quagmire of being "just friends" and then abandon each other with an argument before they could reunite on New Year's Eve.

It follows then that when it comes to romantic conflict, infidelity surely succeeds in stirring up the plot and the emotions of those watching. And when approximately 20-40 percent of American women and 30-50 percent of American men have at least one extramarital affair, according to Emily M. Brown, LCSW, in her book Patterns of Infidelity and Their Treatment, infidelity may also be one of the ugliest but most realistic plot devices directors have ever used. Even a cursory look at film over the last hundred years, from the days of silent film slapstick to the controversy of The Postman Always Rings Twice, would certainly reveal that either the inclusion of or veiled reference to infidelity is enough to drum up interest.

So it's no wonder everyone from new independent directors to seasoned vets continues to use the age-old plot to boost ticket sales. In fact, the development pipelines at the major studios' art-house arms in the past year have looked like a weekend at Hedonism II. A spate of films dealing with extra-curricular love lives came swinging into theaters in 2004, including Michael Mayer's A Home at the End of the World, Tod Williams' The Door in the Floor (both featuring love triangles between two men and a woman) and Jon Curran's We Don't Live Here Anymore (with two wife-swapping couples). The twist in this new breed of films about partner sharing and swapping is that indie filmmakers want to deal with their subjects more from the moral and relationship stance, but they still turn up the coitus count.

Yet it can certainly be argued that these mavericks are really just following in the footsteps of veteran filmmaker Mike Nichols. Back in 1971, Nichols' Carnal Knowledge showed spiritual softie Art Garfunkel and hardcore sex maniac Jack Nicholson having mutual sheet slapping sessions with Candace Bergen and trysts with Ann-Margret in order - according to Nichols - to make a social commentary on the treatment and perception of women in relationships,.

"Carnal Knowledge was really about the [Hugh] Hefner generation," says Nichols. "It's something that is over. It was really about the treating of women as objects."

Nichols recently revisited his roots by having two men compete in sexual Olympics for the same partners in Sony's Closer. Nichols still has his men on a similar quest. There is spiritual softie Jude Law and hardcore sex maniac Clive Owen who are competing for both nubile stripper Natalie Portman and ice queen photographer Julia Roberts. And the reason for all these sexual shenanigans is that Nichols honestly believes it's a true representation of reality - with a twist.

"I think life is riddled with [infidelity]," says Nichols of the partner-swapping games the lovers play in his films. "I just think it is heightened and concentrated in theater and film, which is how you make it fit into a story."

And though he admits playing the tryst card can sell tickets, he says it's more about something that is ingrained in society, whether we want to admit it or not. "It's compelling because it shows aspects of life," explains Nichols "Competition is in everything and games are in everything. When you heighten it in a story you might say, ‘I'm not like those people.' I don't think we mind seeing us in those games, but I don't think we're as tough on ourselves as we might be. The people we've left may tell [a very different] story. I think we give ourselves a clean report card too easily."

Through the years and continuing now, those games of infidelity have been played in films along generally the same lines, but an interesting blip on the radar screen occurred in the '80s. The necessary plot twists that led to infidelity were reduced to almost casual coincidence. Zalman King was the trailblazer of this trend, taking the tried and true screenwriter's crutch of the tumultuous relationship and placing the couple in a setting or situation where they couldn't help but yield to the temptation of cheating on their lover or spouse:  In King's Two Moon Junction (1988), all it takes is the fair coming to her town for a Southern debutante (Sherilyn Fenn) to abandon her posh lifestyle and upcoming semi-arranged marriage to have a lustful and erotic fling with a rugged carnie drifter (Richard Tyson).

Major studios put amateur up-and-coming talent and little money behind such B-grade guilty pleasures as Two Moon Junction and the similar Wild Orchid, where Mickey Rourke keeps Jacqeline Bisset horizontal for most of the film and King pushes the MPAA's buttons with softcore sex scenes leaving little to the imagination. Nothing moralistic was ever deeply analyzed in these films.

Then there were the exceptions that proved the rule. Among the first, in 1986, was director Adrian Lyne, Zalman's partner in crime on the abusive relationship scorcher 9 ½ Weeks, who not only pushed the trend of infidelity back into the mainstream but also had big marquee stars stretching the limits of sexual content they were accustomed to showing.

In 1987, Paramount hit gold ($156 million domestic B.O.) by having Lyne cast Michael Douglas as an adulterer to wife Anne Archer with a mentally unstable Glenn Close as the lover in Fatal Attraction. The scene in which Douglas performs coitus sinkus in the kitchen with Close got couples hot and bothered and men everywhere became just a bit more terrified of the potential for flings to turn into psychotic deathtraps. But the you-can-never-trust-your-husband plotline definitely struck a nerve with audiences who kept rushing back for more.

This trend grew with Lyne's Indecent Proposal (1993, $106 million domestic B.O.) with tycoon Robert Redford asking Woody Harrelson for permission to sleep with Harrelson's wife, played by Demi Moore, for $1 million.

However, big name stars seemed to go into hibernation for the latter half of the '90s, leaving the infidelity to lower-rung talent and smaller-budget producers such as King, who rode out the decade making a comfortable living off the infidelity genre with his straight-to-video Red Shoe Diaries.

But circa 2004, is Hollywood finally making sure even couples in the red states can feel comfortable living out their swinging sexual fantasies through A-list onscreen alter egos, with films like Closer? Are filmmakers like Nichols once again making it safe for conservatives to take on progressive lifestyles as they sit safely in their dark mall cineplexes?

Not necessarily, says Hollywood-based psychotherapist Christine Eghenian, MFT, who specializes in relationship issues.  "I don't think the films are seen as prescriptive by audiences," says Eghenian. "And I don't think the filmmakers are trying to sway people one way or another on this issue. They are trying to get people to think. In the process, yes, audiences may be titillated with nudity and prohibitive sex. But I don't think they are trying to talk anyone into alternative lifestyles."

Esteemed movie critic and conservative commentator Michael Medved agrees there is no malicious intent on the part of filmmakers to incite infidelity en masse.

"I don't believe there is any recent agenda in Hollywood to break down marriage," says Medved. "Infidelity in the movies has always been there, and, furthermore, it's been a staple of novels and plays forever from Madame Bovary to Les Miserables. It helps to create conflict in drama. And it is incredibly interesting to hear stories about people cheating; it is titillating."

But are these unorthodox relationships supposed to reflect the norms of society or is this just a case of directors bringing their personal lives onto the screen to seduce movie-going couples out on date night? Medved feels there could be a tendency for filmmakers to portray infidelity more in movies because it may actually be present in their world more than in others'.

"People in the entertainment field tend to have more pressure on their marriage than others in more typical industries, so infidelity might be more commonplace in Hollywood," explains Medved. "Since people tend to portray what they know, it may be more represented in movies."