Stars: Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson, Helen Mirren, Christopher Walken

Director: Paul Schrader

Summary: Mary and Colin return to Venice to recapture the happiness of their previous holiday and to decide their future together. Their peace is disturbed however, when they are befriended by another couple. A sinister tale of beauty and destruction.

Adapted by Harold Pinter from Ian McEwan's novel, THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS follows a pair of indifferent lovers, Colin and Mary, who travel to the beautiful, romantic and mysterious Italian city of Venice to rekindle their love. As their emotionally icy relationship shows signs of thawing, the couple meets another duo: Robert and Caroline. Little do Colin and Mary realise, Robert and Caroline have been following them, with the most sinister plans in mind. To many, Venice is a city made for lovers, to McEwan's characters the location's romantic image simply disguises a forbidden world of dark sexuality and murder.

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Based on an Ian McEwen novel, The Comfort of Strangersis directed by Paul Schrader at his most portentous. A young couple holidaying in Venice are taken up by an older more sophisticated pair. Christopher Walken as the Eurotrashy Roberto portrays with considerable vigour the sort of smooth stranger from whom anyone who has ever seen this sort of movie ought to run a mile, and Helen Mirren as his complaisant wife is hardly less sinister. Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson are believably obtuse as the lovers who fail to understand exactly what they are being sucked into.

This ought to be a far better film than it is: Harold Pinter's script is elliptically menacing and Angelo Badalamenti's score attractively gloomy. But in the end The Comfort of Strangerspresents a rather low-rent vision of decadence: Roberto's praise of Margaret Thatcher and habit of photographing the unwary and beautiful are not quite enough to make the film's shocking climax entirely plausible. The DVD contains no additional features other than the obligatory theatrical trailer. --Roz Kaveney

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Year:	1990
Release Date:	March 1, 2004
Runtime:	100 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	10001028
Keywords:	General, Comfort, Strangers, Drama
Genre:	Drama