There is no shortage of British filmmakers who got their start directing on stage, with the likes of Sam Mendes and Nicholas Hytner comfortably switching back and forward between the two disciplines over the last decade. At the age of 67, Richard Eyre easily predates both men, but his cinematic work has never matched the impact of his extensive stage presence. Having worked on television and made his first feature, The Ploughman's Lunch, in 1983, he's helmed a succession of pictures over the last 10 years, beginning with Iris (probably the pick of the bunch) and taking in Stage Beauty, Notes on a Scandal and now The Other Man.
His pictures are adept and modestly intellectual, but he's at the mercy of his material. If the story and dialogue can't express what matters, he doesn't appear to know how to do so visually. He's not a natural filmmaker and there comes a moment in The Other Man, where Liam Neeson's angry, abandoned husband must show his obsession with another suitor for his wife, which makes that clear. Eyre has Neeson read out his rival's e-mail, his eyes trapped in a thousand yard stare. When in doubt, he returns to the comfort of text.
The problem with The Other Man, which you will have to search for as it is getting the barest of local releases more than 18 months after it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, is that the text doesn't hold together. Adapted by Eyre and Charles Wood from a short story by Bernhard Schlink (The Reader) it has an opening that is jarring rather than piercing: at a dinner after watching her acclaimed footwear on the London catwalk, shoe designer Lisa (Laura Linney) tweaks the comfortable ease of her loving husband, Peter (Neeson) with remarks about the abandonment of fidelity. The hint of rancour is all that you know about the couple.
Putting Neeson and Linney together is sharp casting. She has a level, intelligent self-regard that refuses to be overwhelmed by sentiment, allowing her to prick at the emotional underpinnings of his towering frame. But after their dinner she is gone, one of several developments that Eyre tries to dance around so as to withhold narrative information and allow of the possibility of third act revelations. But these attempts are clumsy, lacking grace and leaving the story in the service of melodrama.
Growing obsessed, Peter scours her phone and laptop, finding locked folders and lovestruck messages that soon reveal Ralph (pronounced Rafe, Antonio Banderas), a Milanese boulevardier whose cultured appearance suggests the very qualities Peter, a software company boss, has long disliked in Lisa's milieu. Pursuit becomes friendship when Peter takes to meeting Ralph each day – in a not very subtle development they play chess while discussing women, with Ralph rhapsodising Lisa as Peter takes in his every word.
Eyre winds in narrative strands, such as scenes of Ralph and Lisa together, but little of the information he adds is illuminative. You don't learn a great deal about Peter, besides his anger at Ralph and when it is all said and done, all the story has to offer the husband is resigned acceptance. Those watching will probably arrive at the same desultory point well before him.
