Enduring Love

Colour, 35 mm
United Kingdom, 2004, 100 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

How could Joe and Claire ever have imagined what would happen when they decided to have a picnic in the country? Just as they are about to pop the cork on a bottle of champagne, they witness a frightening event — a hot air balloon lands badly on a grassy meadow and a boy remains in the basket.... Was the tragedy avoidable? Joe  feels guilty, his relationship with Claire falls into crisis, and his mental breakdown is made worse by Jed, an oddball who witnessed the accident and relentlessly persecutes Joe. Where is the way out of this maze of hurt feelings? “I was especially intrigued by the situation Joe Rose finds himself in: where he is both the object of love and the victim of love,” the director said. “It raises the question: how does one endure being loved? [That question] kept me coming back again and again to this subject matter.” Daniel Craig (Joe) has also appeared in Road to Perdition (2002); Rhys Infans (Jed) co-starred in Notting Hill (1999). Twice nominated for an Oscar, Samantha Morton (Claire) appeared in Minority Report (2002), and In America (2004).

About the director

Roger Michell (b. 1957, Pretoria) was born in South Africa but grew up in Syria and the Czech Republic, gaining a British university education at Cambridge. At the end of the seventies he started working at the Royal Court Theatre, and for six years directed for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In the nineties he worked in television. There he gained a name for himself thanks to the series “The Buddha of Suburbia” (1993), on which he worked with writer Hanif Kureishi and producer Kevin Loader for the first time. Michell’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1995) was also a hit, and was followed by a TV version of his own West End drama My Night with Reg (1996). His greatest international success, however, remains the yuppie comedy Notting Hill (1999). His filmography also includes Titanic Town (1998), Changing Lanes (2002), The Mother (2003), and Enduring Love (2004).