Forever Mine (1999)

An affair between a cabana boy and the young wife of a sinister politician triggers a 16-year vendetta between the two men.

Director:

Paul Schrader

Writer:

Paul Schrader

Stars:

Joseph Fiennes, Ray Liotta, Gretchen Mol

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Joseph Fiennes	...	Manuel Esquema / Alan Riply
Ray Liotta	...	Mark Brice
Gretchen Mol	...	Ella Brice
Vincent Laresca	...	Javier Cesti
Myk Watford	...	Rick Martino
Lindsey Connell	...	Stewardess
Sean Cw Johnson	...	Randy (as Sean C W Johnson)
Shawn Proctor	...	Cabana Boy
Russell Blackwell	...	Business Associate
Jocelyn Snowdon	...	Young Associate's Companion
Kevi Katsuras	...	Julie, Six Year-old Girl
Shannon Lawson	...	Emily, Julie's Mother
Ronald Knight	...	Older Male Executive
Ginger King	...	Older Male's Companion
Ted Simonett	...	Mr. Galen

Storyline

Two stories, 14 years apart, converge in a suburb of New York. Manuel Esquema, an international financier, whose face is badly scarred, is flying from Miami to help a New York politician negotiate a plea bargain with the Justice Department. Years before, this financier was a fresh-faced cabaña boy at a Miami Beach resort who fell in love with a young woman on holiday with her husband. The husband is now the pol, and he thinks he dispatched the cabaña boy long ago. What are Esquema's plans: revenge, mercy, or a complicated plan to seek again the woman's love?

---

Plot Keywords:

politician | vendetta | revenge | plea bargain | beach | 

---

Taglines:

Some desires are too dangerous to resist.

---

Genres:

Thriller | Romance | Crime | Drama

---

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for strong sexuality and violence, and for language

Details

Country:

UK Canada USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

4 October 2002 (Spain)

Also Known As:

A Sombra de uma Vingança

Filming Locations:

Miami, Florida, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$17,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Forever Mine (UK) Limited, J&M Entertainment, Moonstar Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

115 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Goofs

The movie opens in 1987, then goes to "14 Years Earlier", making it 1973. In the first disco scene, Ella Brice is seen dancing to "Rock The Boat" by The Hues Corporation. That song was not released until February of 1974.

---

Connections

References Goodfellas (1990)

User Reviews

Schrader's most demented ever (and yeah, I remember Rolling Thunder)

We all know that Paul Schrader is a sober son of the Dutch

Reformation Church. Still, I'd love to have a taste of the

crack he was smoking when he wrote this flaming lulu, a

painfully sincere and heartfelt tribute to undying love that

suggests Stanley Kubrick singing "Love Theme from Mahogany" a cappella.

Apparently an attempt to capture the spirit of Scott Spencer's novel "Endless Love" (so famously lost by Franco Zeffirelli), FOREVER MINE posits Joseph Fiennes

(he of the smoldering, gotta-have-you eyebrows) as a Miami cabana boy who messes with the wrong guy's wife--Gretchen Mol as the secretarial cutie who married

gnarly Mr. Big (Ray Liotta). Before you can say AGAINST

ALL ODDS, Mr. Big is coming down hard on Cabana Boy--only, in Schrader's world, this means more mutilations, burials alive, disguises, funny accents, and

villainous moustache-twirlings than in the entirety of

Shakespeare's CYMBELINE.

Schrader claimed he wanted to go back to the nineteenth

century. And indeed, the over-the-top melodrama suggests

a desperate attempt to flee fin-de-siecle irony. But it's

always a train wreck when cerebral directors try to let go of

their book-learning and Open Themselves to Feeling. FOREVER MINE suggests a cable-movie version of Robert Bresson's two wackadoody salutes to cute young boys, FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER and THE DEVIL PROBABLY; Fiennes greets Mol in a seedy motel room on which he has spray painted the words, "GIVE ALL TO LOVE." (That was the tagline of the movie's abortive theatrical run.) Like Kubrick in EYES WIDE SHUT, Schrader

tries to peel off his layers of coldness and ratiocination--but

any movie that opens with a quote from Walter Pater suggests that the filmmaker is more suited to analyzing

melodrama than expressing it.

For all the tropical gloss put on it by the great cinematographer John Bailey, FOREVER MINE has a giggle-inducing quality that's unique even to bad Schrader

movies. (In one scene, Fiennes leaves an ambivalent Mol

in her hotel room. As he walks away, he bumps his head

into a palm frond, stops, and seems to look back at the

palm frond. Fade to black. Does Schrader equate Douglas

Sirk with Ed Wood?) Now that he's expressed his inner lovesick sap, maybe Schrader can go back to who he really

is--a cold, alienated, God-haunted, overeducated freak

from Michigan who's also the greatest living writer of

movies.