From its subtle early images – the sight of a little boy’s bicycle blowing over in the wind nicely foreshadows the upheaval of one family’s life – to its lovely and ambiguous final shot, this is a provocative sex thriller whose best moments are the least explicit ones. When a happy-enough housewife (Diane Lane) embarks on a ravenous affair with a stranger (Olivier Martinez) – only to have her husband (Richard Gere) take violent revenge – the shades of Hitchcock and film noir help the movie drip with just as much guilt, jealousy and murderous impulse as bedroom sweat.
