The opening of the novel and screenplay of "Enduring Love" is the scene of a lover's picnic on the English countryside interrupted by a tragic hot air balloon accident. While this scene does dictate the plot of the story - one of obsession and breakdown - an interruption that is far more telling of the rest of the film is when the story's stalker pops up at his stalkee's private lunch and cautiously coos, "We can't keep meeting like this."
And you thought the title was cheesy.
In fact, "Enduring Love" is not a sappy romance movie, and that line is one of the film's most spine-chilling. Directed by Roger Michell ("Notting Hill" [1999] and "Changing Lanes" [2002]), "Enduring Love" is certainly not the most thrilling thriller ever made, but it is not completely unworthy of the title. Rather than the unknown details of the balloon accident, it is the way in which the survivors' internal reactions become manifest that is the emphasis of the film and the heart of its tension.
The first scene is disturbing even to the most jaded audience, as several men, including Joe (Daniel Craig), rush to help a young boy escape from an unwieldy hot air balloon that refuses to stay anchored to the ground. As the men grab hold of the ropes, the balloon prevails and rises into the sky, forcing all but one of the men to drop before it gets too high. They watch as the last man floats higher, eventually losing his grip and falling to his death before them.
Joe and another man called Jed (Rhys Ifans) run to the fallen man, and Jed implores the secular, academic Joe to pray with him over the dead body. Somewhere in this moment of trauma, the intense Jed feels a connection with Joe that burgeons into the stalking that unfolds.
Originally written by Ian McEwan and adapted for the screen by Joe Penhall, the story quickly becomes one of Joe - a professor and author - witnessing the uncontrollable deterioration of his own rational mind due to the traumatic accident and its unshakable aftermath.
Joe had intended to propose to his sculptor girlfriend Claire (Samantha Morton) that afternoon in the field. Instead, his conception of love unravels as he is continually haunted both by the accident and, more importantly, by Jed, who shows up at Joe's and Claire's flat and soon everywhere Joe goes.
A supposed psychological thriller, the film falls short of its mark, not for lack of acting but instead for failure to explore its main plot thread far enough. The creepiness of an unwanted obsession is definitely palpable, but the suspense of a thriller is never really generated; the "mysterious" elements present - those that an audience might normally want to get to the bottom of - are not emphasized enough to even make the audience realize that it should be curious.
For instance, when Joe goes to visit the widow of the balloon victim, she reveals suspicions that her husband had been unfaithful and that he had run to the balloon with the others only to impress his mistress. This could have been investigated further and twisted into a tighter plot thread; however, it is barely touched and rather uneventfully explained at the end of the film.
Even tracing the path of Jed's disquieting obsession with Joe leaves the adrenaline junky wanting more suspense (with the partial exception of the final twist). However, treated like a straight drama, "Enduring Love" does offer some perplexities about human expectation, and, as Joe, Craig effectively portrays the anxiety that ensues when love, and even reality, are turned on their heads.
The balloon serves to represent all things arbitrary, for the man's unexpected death came and went in an instant, as does Joe's sanity when suddenly faced with Jed's madness.
Ifans is superior in the film, portraying how easily loneliness can drive a person to unfounded and unreciprocated attachment. Almost unaware of anything but the object of his affection, Ifans plays the persistent, stringy-haired Jed as the crazy person you'd rather walk away from than look in the face and tell to leave you alone.
On the other side of Joe, Morton is solid as the girlfriend who has to go along for Joe's ride, watching him complicate their relationship despite her efforts to ground him.
Unlike the acting, the camerawork is a bit overwrought, with the theme being first-person perspective shots to emulate the viewpoint of Jed's stalking. While this was sometimes distracting, it did do well to keep the dominant thread of obsession afloat. "Enduring Love," whatever its genre, contains impressive performances and certainly some thrilling moments, but in the end might be as arbitrary and hard to pin down as the hot air balloon that sets the story in motion.
