Otherwise Maladroit

July 1997 A Review of the Film Husbands and Lovers

July 1997

A Review of the Film Husbands and Lovers

I want someone to love me the way Julian Sands loves Joanna Pacula in Husbands and Lovers. Sands play Stefan, a writer who loved his wife Elena (Pacula) more than he desired her. Elena in the meantime explored cheap perverted thrills with her lover, whom Stefan was aware of. She shared her experiences to a very confused Stefan, who could not understand what she saw in her relationship with her lover. Once, she discussed her "discovery" to her husband, about a new way of approaching sex using violent foreplay. Stefan realized she was describing sadomasochism, and countered her ideas with the more universal repulsion for such practices. She argued that, if it was repulsive then why did she enjoy it? Stefan was driven into drinking by seeing his wife becoming more and more twisted. Obviously from my narration it reveals that Husbands and Lovers is not a happy movie. It is a very frustrating film. As a viewer watching the depressing events, you decide that Stefan has every right to use a heavy hand upon her, because it seems a fitting exchange for her unfaithfulness. Stefan himself has taken on lovers for short periods of gratification, but only because his wife urges him to do so to drive away his loneliness. He does not enjoy these short relationships, or feel compelled to knock some sense into his wife with his fists (or his feet), for the very simple reason that he loves her too much. As one of his lovers explained, he loves Elena with the innocence and purity of a child, unconditional and without reservation. To elaborate, he loves her beyond sex and any physical pleasure, because just seeing her gives him joy, and pleasing her pleases him too. Of course everyone has a boiling point, and when Stefan reaches that, he concludes in his foggied mind that to end his unhappiness he should eliminate the cause of it viz. Elena. So he takes a gun with him to a beachside house where Elena stays with her lover, but his love for her stops him in the act of shooting, leaving his intention unfulfilled. Towards the end, Elena finally realizes that sadomasochism with her lover does not fill her inquisitive mind with answers to a satisfying relationship, which she seems to be searching for. Maybe it was because her most recent tryst in sadomasochism hurt more than she could handle. As I was saying when I begun this paragraph, I want someone to love me the way Stefan loves Elena. A love beyond materialism that it is almost spiritual. There are guys who would love their loved ones even if they became hideous and covered with pimples resembling bubonic sores, and then there's Stefan who loves his wife a step farther.

posted by Otherwise Maladroit @ 5:05 PM