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Damage

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United Kingdom, France · 1992
Rated R · 1h 51m
Director Louis Malle
Starring Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche, Miranda Richardson, Rupert Graves
Genre Drama, Romance

British politician Stephen is in a dull but stable relationship with his wife Ingrid. When he meets his son's alluring fiancée Anna, he starts an obsessive affair with her, while also trying to maintain his political reputation and his family.

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What are critics saying?

100

Chicago Tribune by Gene Siskel

A mesmerizing drama of sexual obsession...What makes Damage so special-and separates it from a typically American treatment of the same material-is that David Hare's script from Josephine Hart's novel gives equal time to exploring the female psyche in the film.

50

The New York Times by Janet Maslin

Not even a film maker of Mr. Malle's intelligence and taste can make this stilted story add up. The only ingredient that can make sense of "Damage" is the obvious one: outright eroticism, of the sort that presumably got the film its original NC-17 rating.

90

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

High-class entertainment, carefully controlled, beautifully mounted and played with total conviction. Its lurid soul may have more in common with Jackie Collins than Jane Austen, but its passionate nature and convincing performances can’t help but draw you in.

90

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

Richardson is extraordinary; it’s a brave, award-caliber performance...The fiercely erotic and deeply moving Damage casts a hypnotic spell and without moralizing.

100

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Damage, like "Last Tango in Paris" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," is one of those rare movies that is about sexuality, not sex; about the tension between people, not "relationships"; about how physical love is meaningless without a psychic engine behind it. Stephen and Anna are wrong to do what they do in "Damage," but they cannot help themselves. We know they are careening toward disaster. We cannot look away.

67

Austin Chronicle by Steve Davis

Damage brings to mind Last Tango in Paris, although Malle's elegant, precise direction is drastically different from Bertolucci's work, a film that celebrates the loss of inhibition and control. Although relentlessly somber, Damage offers a perverse humor in the idea of father-and-son rivalry over the same woman: it's like the Oedipus complex in reverse.

70

Variety by Todd McCarthy

A complex look at an illicit affair that ends in disaster for everyone in its vicinity, "Damage" is a cold, brittle film about raging, traumatic emotions. Unjustly famous before its release for its hardly extraordinary erotic content, this veddy British-feeling drama from vet French director Louis Malle proves both compelling and borderline risible, wrenching and yet emotionally pinched, and reps a solid entry for serious art house audiences worldwide.

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