It would have been difficult but I would have buried you. And I would have wept.

Damage
Louis Malle 1992 UK
Starring: Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche, Miranda Richardson, Rupert Graves, Ian Bannen, Peter Stormare, Leslie Caron

Louis Malle's Damage is a hard film to get a handle on. Shot frequently in angles and shadows, at first look its story of an older man having a passionate affair with a younger woman feels like nothing unusual but then the psychosexual developments appear. The protagonist Dr Stephen Fleming (played by Jeremy Irons, who never seems to have been young) is a politician on his way to the top. He's already a minister and there's talk of him being awarded an even higher position. What's more he's well off, depressingly middle-class and has a loving if snarky wife, two children and servants who call him 'Sir'. As it turns out his entire life is composed of chains of command, from his secretary, whom he only ever refers to formally suggesting a relationship that has never moved into the casual or friendly, to his marriage in which his wife is very much in charge. Even his career has been more or less decided and arranged by his wealthy parents and, although he can apparently do it with a shocking ease, taking political rebels breathing fire and twisting them until they purr like lambs, his real ambitions are never mentioned. His sexual technique during his infidelities reflects the powerlessness of his existence as finally he can become dominant even as he's helpless in her mistress' wake; in one encounter she even appears to be trying to escape him as they scuttle like crabs along her kitchen cabinets before knotting and gendering like Shakespeare's toads in a cistern. The she in question is Anna and to complicate things further she is the girlfriend of his son Martyn. Playing her with an eerie, androgynous quality is Juliette Binoche, pulling off a faultless English accent when she actually does speak. At once aloof and irresistible she captures both men without the need for many words and, in the first sex scene with her lover, prostrates herself like a sacrifice on a cross and surrenders to the least sensual fuck imaginable. She too is far from working class although she mentions that she "even had a spell as a waitress", the mindboggling deadpan response of Fleming's father "Well, when you're young". She has a troubled relationship with her four-times married mother and a beloved brother who killed himself when they were teenagers, apparently as a result of the realisation that, as she moved into womanhood, he would have to share her love with undeserving boyfriends. Late on it's pointed out that Martyn (a convincingly realistic Rupert Graves) is the spitting image of said brother and another complexity is added to the narrative, one that we know isn't going to end well. By the time the relationship between Fleming and Anna reaches its conclusion the structure of control has switched again and we realise that becoming the submissive is so ingrained into his personality that he really can't escape it as much as he may flex his muscles on those rare occasions he is allowed to. If their attachment to one another seems unlikely it too takes several forms. Initially it appears as if she is trying to trap him, perhaps to take advantage of his status and potential for a kiss-and-tell cash-in but that idea soon fades. After a while the possibility that the entire affair is happening only within his head rears its head, certainly when they first meet at a party thrown by his colleagues there is no logical reason for her to be there (she works in the antiques business) and she's a ghostly presence, introducing herself and leaving him in a trance, before departing in silence, unnoticed it seems by everyone but him. Several other scenes too seem improbable at best but are still credible as the fantasies of a man deep into a middle-aged malaise, the darkness that continually impinges his mind's desperate attempt to justify and resolve the desires he knows he shouldn't be having but can't help turning to his advantage. Fleming's political life unfortunately is never really added to the plot but perhaps this too points towards the hallucinatory theory, his brain only bringing forth things truly important to him and leaving other details unexplored on the outskirts. If such a reading feels monotonous and repetitive however the acting and David Hare's excellent adaptation of the spare source novel carries it through. As good as the leads are though it's Miranda Richardson who as Ingrid steals the film in the intense final confrontation with her husband, her face bruised from beating herself, her grief fraying forth, her expertly controlled poise perhaps gone forever.