The Synopsis: Nicol Williamson stars as a middle-aged employee of the British secret service. His house is in some fancy suburb of London seemingly near the countryside, and he bicycles(!) to work. He lives with his much younger wife, who is black. The whole plot turns on the suspicion of a double agent somewhere in the firm, and finding out who it is. It is at first suspected to be Williamson's friend, a rather sweet, guileless man played by Derek Jacobi. The plot thickens from there.
Sounds like Le Carre, doesn't it? Actually it is very like Le Carre, but its also much less dense and easier to follow than Le Carre's work (which i mostly adore, but am rarely able to finish a novel by him and tell anyone anything about what happened). There are many commendable things about this film, but it is finally too flawed to be at all satisfying. At its best, it has a dreary Antonioniesque nausea to it. However, Graham Greene was, I think, a notch or two below Le Carre, talent-wise, in terms of spy novels and sheer dramatic power, anyway, and what drama there is is further undermined by an increasing reliance on the non-existent acting skills of the model Iman, as Williamson's wife, who unfortunately becomes a focal point of the drama more and more as the film goes on. The film's conclusion would probably be a pretty lame cutting-off point no matter who was playing the role, though. Although the cinematography is far from Preminger's most beautiful (see Bunny Lake is Missing), his camera movement still has that superbly American sense of drama, intelligence and inquisitiveness that was his trademark. Another late-Preminger trademark, from what i gather, was putting older actors in weird sexual situations, and here we get to see Robert Morley at a strip club. It's quite funny to see his patented Robert Morley leer in this context. Morley plays one of Williamson's bosses, a rather evil man, finally, who ruthlessly exterminates at least one person who he thinks is the mole *** SPOILER ALERT SORT OF *** but who later turns out not to be.
Sounds like Le Carre, doesn't it? Actually it is very like Le Carre, but its also much less dense and easier to follow than Le Carre's work (which i mostly adore, but am rarely able to finish a novel by him and tell anyone anything about what happened). There are many commendable things about this film, but it is finally too flawed to be at all satisfying. At its best, it has a dreary Antonioniesque nausea to it. However, Graham Greene was, I think, a notch or two below Le Carre, talent-wise, in terms of spy novels and sheer dramatic power, anyway, and what drama there is is further undermined by an increasing reliance on the non-existent acting skills of the model Iman, as Williamson's wife, who unfortunately becomes a focal point of the drama more and more as the film goes on. The film's conclusion would probably be a pretty lame cutting-off point no matter who was playing the role, though. Although the cinematography is far from Preminger's most beautiful (see Bunny Lake is Missing), his camera movement still has that superbly American sense of drama, intelligence and inquisitiveness that was his trademark. Another late-Preminger trademark, from what i gather, was putting older actors in weird sexual situations, and here we get to see Robert Morley at a strip club. It's quite funny to see his patented Robert Morley leer in this context. Morley plays one of Williamson's bosses, a rather evil man, finally, who ruthlessly exterminates at least one person who he thinks is the mole *** SPOILER ALERT SORT OF *** but who later turns out not to be.