BBB

(out of 5)

Warren Beatty co-wrote this remake of Leo McCarey’s ever-popular 1939 film of the same name, which was also filmed by McCarey in 1957 as An Affair To Remember.  Beatty plays the wandering playboy and Annette Bening is the “regular gal” with whom he happens to be sharing a plane trip. Their flight gets re-routed because of Tropical storms over the Pacific Ocean, and soon they find themselves on a gorgeous, Felliniesque ocean liner where they fall deeply in love.  If you can swallow all your disbelief and accept the fact that Beatty’s age is hidden through the use of ten pounds of Vaseline on the camera lens, you will get no end of pleasure from this richly photographed romance. The highlight here is a sequence on Fiji where Beatty visits his aged aunt (played by a, dare I say it, feisty Katharine Hepburn) and Bening charms her to no end (of course the scarf thing is everyone’s favourite! It makes me cry endlessly in the Deborah Kerr version too).

Mulholland Productions

USA, 1994

Directed by Glenn Gordon Caron

Screenplay by Robert Towne, Warren Beatty, based on the screenplay by Delmer Daves, Donald Ogden Stewart, story by Mildred Cram, Leo McCarey

Cinematography by Conrad L. Hall

Produced by Warren Beatty

Music by Ennio Morricone

Production Design by Ferdinando Scarfiotti

Costume Design by Milena Canonero

Film Editing by Robert C. Jones