Let's be realistic.

How sad is this?

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

On the brink of a marriage proposal as they picnic in a country meadow, a college professor and his girlfriend are blind-sided when an out-of-control hot air balloon drops from the sky with a terrified young boy in its basket. Strangers arrive from nowhere to grab hold of the tethering ropes, but a gust of wind lifts the balloon back into the air. Everybody lets go - except for one man who plunges to his death shortly afterward.From this melodramatic beginning, 'Enduring Love' quickly descends into an existentialist quagmire. The professor's romance begins to show signs of strain as he agonizes over his role in the accident, and one of the strangers from the field starts to stalk him. Characters converse in an artificially obscure manner, shout at one another and walk about in pouring rain to demonstrate their psychological conflict. An intrusive soundtrack, glib camera techniques and jumpy editing provide further irritation until another melodramatic episode resolves the issue with the stalker. Several years later, some of the characters return to the meadow to discuss how past events have affected their lives - while many viewers will be considering how a pretentious director and screenwriter have wasted 100 minutes of their time on such specious nonsense.

Masquerading as a highbrow piece of art, ENDURING LOVE turns out to be just another psycho-killer movie about a deranged stalker and one that's indebted to the wave of psychological thrillers that flooded cinemas in the wake of FATAL ATTRACTION. For all its posturing, stylised shots and deep and meaning conversations, by the climax it's followed exactly the same routes as all the other movies in this sub-genre.The level of pretension is high and those who detest watching middle-class types sitting around dinner tables, drinking copious amounts of red wine and discussing the meaning of life should look away now. Daniel Craig plays a stuffy, pompous and unlikeable character and despite some strong acting is never able to overcome audience aversion to his role. Rhys Ifans, on the other hand, is a breath of fresh air, even if he does play an even murkier variant on his amusing character in NOTTING HILL. There are many familiar faces in the supporting cast, all underutilised, while Samantha Morton stars as Craig's utterly selfish and unpleasant girlfriend who seems unaware of her partner's predicament until her world comes crashing down.For all its flaws, ENDURING LOVE does have a couple of stand-out moments: the climax of the story is shocking and made even more so by the subtle way it's acted out; a definite highlight. The opening balloon accident is very well filmed and another strong moment; it's just a shame the bits inbetween involve such unappealing characters. Not that ENDURING LOVE is a bad film, because it passes the time quite well and has a decent pacing; it's just that this is a story we've seen all too many times before, no matter how much they try dressing it up otherwise.

Without getting into supreme spoilers, Enduring Love opens so well and exhilaratingly I doubted if the movie could live up to it's superb beginning subsequently. The disappointing answer is - it didn't - not quite. There's a bit of stale air in the derangement and lost sanity of the main character. (spoiler) This is in no small part thanks to a clichéd stalker-esquire mood that grows tiresome. Why cant the main character simply goto the police and report the weirdo? Guess that must be too logical. Some of the better parts of the movie though involve the dialog and how it examines love and/or how the main character looks at it vs. his tormentor, lover, and class. Daniel Craig is an excellent actor and holds the picture together pretty well. The acting of the support is satisfactory. At the conclusion, you may feel a bit disappointed, but you can help wipe that away by recalling the first 15 min of the film - that alone makes the movie more than average fare.

In contrast to the comments Tresdodge's featured on these pages, I found Enduring Love compelling viewing. I saw it at the cinema and was blown away; subsequent viewings on DVD have continued to move me. While The Lawyer finds the lack of detail, background and explanation frustrating, it seemed to me a perfect study of miscommunication between adults, especially the well-educated, and a comment on the pretensions creative types have for apparent perceptiveness in others; Samantha Morton's character is the most prone to misread her partner's behaviour, and an up and coming artist, no less.Surrounding Craig's scientifically-minded character are similarly well-read arty north Londoners all either completely oblivious to Joe's distress or the cause of it, preferring a rather British 'take no notice' view of Jed's stalking, which I found entirely believable. Jed's protestations of love in the Tate Modern was a classic example to me of the irony present throughout the film: a man declares his love in an art gallery, a hallowed place where fierce emotion is channelled into high art. But he is merely rendered a nuisance and shooed away. How very English! The film is remarkable for what it does not discuss openly; the lingering silences and awkward pauses as Joe's mind starts to unravel at dinner parties illustrate how ill-at-ease these Guardian-reading, latte-drinking middle classes are discussing unpleasant aspects of life in general. Which is a cliché but not altogether untrue. No, there isn't apparently an inquest, nor any police involvement, but it's not a documentary, it's a study of how people react the fallout of a violent event; it brings to mind Peter Weir's Fearless (1993), which examined the extent to which people withdraw when coping with severe stress. A rational mind such as Tresdodge's would perhaps enjoy Joe's sessions with a counsellor but the point is Joe's identity is fundamentally in crisis here; he is unable to explain Jed's attentions, nor Mr Logan's motivations for hanging onto the balloon, nor his perverse sense of guilt that he could somehow have stopped the whole thing from happening. What good is science in the face of such overwhelmingly human behaviour? To put Tresdodge's mind at rest, I read the book after seeing the film and didn't find much in the way of explanation there, either, except more elaboration on Joe's rigid belief there is a rational explanation for everything. Which would also explain the tension between Joe and Claire, who as an artist is presumably of the opposite view. On the surface, Claire has more in common with Jed's character; while obviously disturbed, Jed wholly embraces his emotions, regardless of how inappropriate they are.The score and cinematography is as integral to the success of the film as the script, which I found perfectly satisfactory, although Tresdodge is right when he says the opening sequence of the ballooning accident is the best moment of the film. The tension begins right there, before the balloon has even appeared, as you can see a proposal is about to take place, and it never leaves the screen. This film is complex and uncomfortable to watch, but deeply satisfying; I get something new out of it every time. Even the title can be read in two ways - think about it.