Love Affair ** (1994, Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Katharine Hepburn) – Classic Movie Review 2328

Director Glen Gordon Caron’s 1994 turgid romance is a bloated and pretty disastrous attempt to re-film director Leo McCarey’s 1939 classic and his remake, An Affair to Remember.

Warren Beatty stars in an ideal role as a suave charmer, ex-football star Mike Gambril, who meets Big Apple lady Terry McKay (Annette Bening) on a plane from New York to Sydney, which is forced to land on a small atoll. Both engaged to others, they become romantic partners on board the ship sent to take the plane passengers to a larger island. But the path to true love is strewn as ever with nettles.

They decide to prove their love by a quarter-year separation and agree to meet in New York City three months later to see if their attraction is real. One shows up, but the other doesn’t when a car injury stops Bening meeting up at the appointed spot on the Empire State Building, making Beatty think she doesn’t love him. However they run into each other afterwards…

Real-life marrieds Beatty and Bening are perfectly cast but surprisingly show very little screen chemistry, while the 87-year-old Katharine Hepburn is a very welcome presence, though rather wasted as Beatty’s crusty auntie, Ginny.

It helps a little that there’s a very strong cast of notable character actors, including Garry Shandling, Chloe Webb, Pierce Brosnan, Kate Capshaw, Brenda Vaccaro, Paul Mazursky, Glenn Shadix, Barry Miller, Harold Ramis, Elya Baskin, Taylor Dayne, Carey Lowell, Dan Castellanata, Rosalind Chao, Wendle Jo Sperber and Frank Campanella

But the movie’s three main saving graces are the incredibly handsome production by production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, Conrad L Hall’s gorgeous cinematography and Ennio Morricone’s lush score.

However, with a screenplay by Beatty and Robert Towne, adapting the 1939 story and screenplay, this Love Affair is mostly just a good-looking bore. Though it’s in the Warner Bros Hits selection of DVDs, it cost $60million and grossed only $18million at the US box office.

There’s one use of strong language.

Her first theatrical film in ten years, it proved Katharine Hepburn’s final cinema feature, though she made the TV movie One Christmas that same year. She died on June 29 2003, aged 96.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2328

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