Love Affair

Warren Beatty isn’t actually an idiot, though it’s hard to tell sometimes. He does, however, have an increasingly lackluster sense of material that’s registered in every movie he’s starred in for the past decade. In the 1960s, Beatty became his own producer because it was the only way that he could steer his fledgling career in a major direction. Now, he has become that supremely ironic critter: a “producer-auteur” who doesn’t know what to make of himself.

That’s one of the major problems in Beatty’s new film Love Affair. He’s become his own worst leading man, delivering a performance that wavers between indecision and, seemingly, indifference. Beatty has always been an extremely odd “sex god,” especially since his romantic appeal is based upon a strange sense of egoistic shyness. His shambling mannerisms and verbal flounderings come across like a man who’s constantly surprised to find himself at the center of attention – while his eyes are constantly fixed on the rest of the room, making sure that everyone is watching him. It’s as if he’s willing to stand in a dark corner at a party, but only so long as the rest of the party comes to him.

In the right movie, this quality can give Beatty a distinctly modern dimension. But in a worn old shoe like Love Affair (first made in the 1930s and then remade in the 1950s as An Affair to Remember), Beatty’s non-mannerisms virtually gut the movie of emotional charge. Maybe his character really is deeply in love, but Beatty plays it with all the excitement of a guy ordering a pizza.

Not that he’s helped any by his co-star, Annette Bening (Mrs. Warren Beatty). Normally, she’s a reasonably engaging performer: a little perky, a little tough, and never too much of anything else. But in Love Affair, Bening mostly adopts a wan look and acts as if the slightest sign of histrionics would be impolite. She also may be deeply in love, but Bening behaves as if she can’t decide between pepperoni and anchovies.

Presumably, you already know the story to Love Affair (and if you don’t, then you’re one of the few people in the country who didn’t see Sleepless In Seattle). Likewise, you may also be aware that Love Affair is strongly wedded to the conviction that the heart must triumph over everything else. It’s an old notion, but a nice one. Unfortunately, Beatty’s version seems more preoccupied with the couple’s questionable future in light of his character’s infamous womanizing past. Guess that means ol’ Warren won’t be bar-hopping with Jack Nicholson anymore.

Rounding out this new version are Pierce Brosnan and Kate Capshaw as the two fiancées who learn to accept the changed hearts of their respective intendeds. Capshaw is the only cast member who actually sparks; Brosnan just acts bored. Gary Shandling is along for comic relief, but he’s not in the movie’s only funny scene. (The one where a minor character starts wondering why the OSU football team is called the Buckeyes. “Do their eyes stick out or something?”)

This season, maybe.