Adrian Lyne has distinguished himself as one of the cinema?s leading directors with such films as ?Foxes,? ?Jacob?s Ladder,? ?Flashdance,? ?9 1/2 Weeks,? ?Fatal Attraction,? ?Indecent Proposal? and ?Lolita.? UNFAITHFUL carries Lyne?s exploration of relationships to new levels of intensity and danger. The triangle formed by Richard Gere, Diane Lane, and French star Olivier Martinez (known to American audiences through his international hits ?The Horseman on the Roof? and ?The Chambermaid on the Titanic,? as well as ?Before Night Falls?) is a startling and suspenseful vision of, as Lyne puts it, ?The smoke screens we put up to hide our guilt.?

Lyne has nurtured UNFAITHFUL for many years. Its genesis stretches all the way to 1968, when ?La Femme Infid?le,? one of the acknowledged masterworks of French New Wave director Claude Chabrol, made its appearance. ?It was one of my favorite films,? says Lyne, ?kind of a Hitchcockian piece wherein a husband gradually became aware that his wife was having an affair. I always loved it, and I used it as a basis for this film, very loosely.?

Lyne has always shown a strong concern for emotional relationships in his work, particularly those relationships affected by deception and crises of trust. ?Guilt and sexuality are a fascinating part of that,? he says. ?I think all of us have a breaking point, where we potentially could be pushed over the edge. What does it take to bring us that far? I?m very interested in the details of deception and suspicion. UNFAITHFUL is a story in which it may actually be easier for the audience to forgive a murderer than an adulteress, which is insane, of course!?

After Richard Gere first read the screenplay, he felt haunted by it. ?It was a very textured, very intimate script that was not only interesting, but disturbing to me,? he explains. ?You can?t get started on a project unless that mystery and disturbance are there somewhere ? an itch that you?ve got to give the time and energy to figure out. What flaw is it in us that can be touched so quickly into violence?

?I?ve always been interested in the idea that we?re all unknowable to each other,? Gere continues. ?In this case we?re dealing with a normal, recognizable American family that has somehow stopped growing. They?ve settled into something that is very nice and it works for them, but it?s not taking them anyplace forward. It?s not bringing more love; it?s not bringing more intimacy; it?s not bringing more truth. So in their separate ways, these people are discovering some kind of black-hole areas inside themselves. There are levels of intimacy that just aren?t being dealt with between them. We?re all closed up on many levels. We all have layers of armor around us, and I think that?s what we all liked about this story: If we look in the mirror of the movie, we can see ourselves.?

For Gere, the role of the very normal Edward Sumner was a departure. ?Being normal is so hard!? he laughs. ?It?s much easier being aberrant. You know, my career?s been peopled with a lot of outsiders. But Edward is not a dashing guy in any way. This is not a guy who?s going to win a fistfight. Adrian was always saying to me, ?Richard no, no! That?s the old Richard. I want the new Richard! I don?t want the guy who could have been the halfback. I want the guy who watched the game!? So an Everyman quality was what I was looking for here.?

?When I saw Richard in the Robert Altman film Dr. T and the Women,?? says Lyne, ?it seemed then that he?d reached a kind of plateau; he had a kind of serenity and niceness that I hadn?t seen before. I thought it was interesting how he was used in that film. If you look at him in this one, I think you?ll be surprised. One day he went home to his wife wearing the wardrobe he wears in the film, and his wife looked at him, gave him a big hug and said, ?You?re just an ordinary guy in this one!? So I was kind of thrilled about that, really. We?ve worked to reverse everything that you?ve expected of him in the past ? even his walk. And it?s quite a revelation to see him in this. In fact, it?s Olivier Martinez who is playing a character closer to the Richard Gere of twenty years ago.?

Indeed, the charismatic young French star plays the kind of cocksure charmer that Gere had virtually patented during the early days of his career. The character of Paul is a winning ladies? man who lives entirely for the moment. ?For me,? says Martinez, ?Paul is an innocent. He doesn?t know what is going to happen, and he has no control over his future. I was very interested by this angle of the character. He?s like a child; he?s free ? too free. He?s not a manipulator, but he?s a game-player. We don?t always know exactly who he is; there?s a certain kind of mystery about him. He?s not a heavy, complicated ambiguous character. And this is quite different from anything I?ve done before.?

For Martinez, it was a role full of challenges. ?First,? he says, ?the language: speaking English is definitely a challenge! And yes, the sex scenes were a challenge. But this is a movie, and things are faked, just like a fight scene in which nobody really gets beaten up or killed. And I?m not coming from this very deep, Stanislavsky method. It?s true that this was my first time doing these explicit love scenes ? and it?s not my favorite thing to do, because I?m quite shy! I needed to forget myself, so I could maintain the character. Adrian and Diane were very relaxed about it; I was the one who was uptight! They made me more relaxed, and I think that made my character more likable.?

Although the character of Paul had not originally been conceived as French, Adrian Lyne felt instinctively that Martinez was the right choice for the role. ?Olivier has a nice sense of humor,? says Lyne. ?The fact that he?s French adds another layer, too. The most ordinary, mundane things are far more interesting when you watch them from a French or Italian or Latin person: the gestures; the sense of humor, are all so different and fascinating to watch. I think it helps one understand how Connie might have leapt into this affair ? he?s very beguiling, doing even ordinary things.

?The idea that this supposedly happily-married woman with a child should have an affair with this man is horrifying,? Lyne adds. ?However, I think when women see Olivier Martinez on the street like she did, even though they won?t admit it to their friends, I think they will understand why she went upstairs with this guy.?

Lyne cast Diane Lane in the role of Connie for a variety of compelling reasons, not the least of which was her critically-acclaimed performance in Tony Goldwyn?s ?A Walk on the Moon.? ?It was a wonderful film,? says Lyne, ?and Diane was very sympathetic and vulnerable in it; you really liked her. And I thought that, given that Connie has a child, and she?s happily married, it would be easy to see her as unsympathetic when she begins this affair. So we had to make certain that she was likable and nice.

?When you think about it,? Lyne continues, ?there are very few beautiful actors and actresses that don?t have an element of toughness about them. It sort of comes with the package ? the sexuality and the toughness. Diane projects both the sexuality and a niceness, which is rare. There?s a sort of knowing quality. What?s nice in this, I think, is that you really believe she?s someone who tries to do the right thing but doesn?t succeed.?

?This is an issue that everyone, sooner or later, can identify with,? says Diane Lane. ?To some degree we?re all touched by this human flaw of the wandering eye. And the question is, how does it play itself out? Does it wreck homes? Do people grow from it? At the beginning of the story, Connie is unquestioning of her marriage. She loves her husband and child, and she?s happy in her life. Her whole world is defined by who she is in her marriage. In a certain way, her relationship with Edward is taken for granted. But I think that what often happens with relationships in the long term is that you stay within the frame of the person that you knew; that you met. And suddenly you may feel that you?re not only that person all the time. We go through changes, and you don?t always realize that until something sparks you to see yourself in a different light. That?s what makes Connie vulnerable.?

For Richard Gere and Diane Lane, UNFAITHFUL was a happy reunion. They had co-starred once before, in Francis Ford Coppola?s ?The Cotton Club.? ?I loved working with Diane,? Gere says. ?She?s matured into such a beautiful woman and a wonderful actress. I think that knowing each other before has brought a lot of ease to the relationship, the kind of normalcy of people who have spent years together. That doesn?t always come easy. You just meet an actor or actress a couple of weeks before you start shooting, and you?re kind of pumping it with what you think a normal relationship will be. Although Diane and I had not seen each other much in the interim since ?Cotton Club,? it was very easy to pick that up.?

?It was like going home,? says Diane Lane of her professional reunion with Gere. ?It was shelter in a storm. So much had been asked of me because we filmed all the scenes between Connie and Paul first, before Richard joined us. Eighteen years before, I was eighteen years old working with him. Now he?s grown up, and I?ve grown up. Richard is a deeply feeling person and he?s refined how sensitive he always was into something much greater. He was very nurturing and very supportive during the filming, and always there to champion me and not just be concerned for himself. I cannot express how rare that is, and how welcome it was at that moment for me.?

The psychological nudity of the erotic scenes posed the biggest challenge for Lane, not the physical. ?I didn?t have a lot of struggle with that,? she explains. ?I was more naked in this movie, take after take and angle after angle, than I?ve been in my entire personal life!? Lane jokes. ?You?ve got to get used to it. A lot of actors have had this experience in their careers. Now I?m in that club of knowing what it feels like. For me, the challenge was the emotional work that was required for those scenes ? the vulnerability that Connie feels, and her torment about the sexual relationship. That was where my work really came in.?

Throughout the production of UNFAITHFUL, which was filmed mostly in Manhattan and the Westchester County suburb of White Plains, Lyne worked closely with costume designer Ellen Mirojnick and production designer Brian Morris to maintain a highly realistic look for the film, one that was richly-textured yet monochromatic. The color red, for example, was used only in a single key scene. ?The color choices throughout the film are consistently muted,? says Morris, ?contributing to a general feeling of moodiness.?

Lyne prefers filming in real locations, and UNFAITHFUL was no exception. The Sumner?s home is a 19th-century farmhouse on four acres of land in White Plains, while Paul?s loft is an actual Soho floor-through. ?The locations were, in most cases, altered and completely re-decorated,? says Morris. ?We present a visual contrast between the ordered, perfect world of Edward Sumner and the world of Paul Martel, a free spirit, whose life is a spontaneous one filled with scattered objects and spur-of-the-moment assignations. Paul?s loft is layered with objects acquired over time from all over the world, with piles of books that have not yet found a bookshelf.

?By contrast,? Morris continues, ?Edward?s house is decorated with objects and furniture from the best shops Manhattan and the affluent suburbs have to offer. Nothing is out of place; therefore, nothing is a surprise. The house has a sense of completion to it. It reflects Edward?s need for security, but at the same time, allows us to understand Connie?s restlessness, especially when she is confronted with Paul?s space, which is in a state of comfortable chaos. His loft is so full of surprises that it allows Connie to be seduced by the sense of mystery and adventure in the atmosphere itself, not just by the character of Paul.?

Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick also worked to keep the clothes natural, yet visually informative for audiences. ?The idea was to make the characters look real,? she explains. ?We dealt with the story of a real family; real people, and Adrian is very sensitive to the genuineness of people. So these must never feel like costumes. It must feel like you?ve knocked on a neighbor?s door, and out came the neighbor. Adrian encourages you to work from a very naturalistic, very humanistic ground. If it doesn?t ring true, and it doesn?t ring genuine, take it off the body, and put something else on. You shouldn?t really notice the clothes in this film, unless they?re making a story point. They have to have an emotional resonance for the audience.

?Olivier is Parisian, so his character reflects that fact. Olivier had a lot of input into his look, and he made suggestions based on what he wears at home in Paris, and what other men wear in Paris. I?m always happy to encourage that kind of creative collaboration from actors; then I edit it as I see fit.?

UNFAITHFUL is very much of a New York movie; its locations included such well-known New York destinations as The Strand Bookstore, the Village East Cinema, Grand Central Station, and the bars and restaurants of Chelsea, Soho, Wall Street, and Tribeca. Like Lyne?s other New York films, ?Fatal Attraction? and ?Jacob?s Ladder,? it depicts New York as a vibrant, vital, sexy city, one in which voluptuousness and danger coexist and seduce the unwary.

Toward the end of principal photography, Lyne reflected on the experience of making UNFAITHFUL. ?What?s exciting in the end,? he said, ?is the actors. That?s why I do it ? for the thrill of those moments when you feel they?ve chipped a bit of themselves off and given it to you. That?s the best feeling, and I?ve had lots of moments like that on this film ? when after a take, I?ll say to myself, ?Damn! They were good!? ?

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