French master Claude Chabrol, whose La Femme Infidèle serves as the source material for Adrian Lyne's (Fatal Attraction, Lolita) by-the-numbers look at infidelity, made a career out of picking apart the hypocrisies and calumnies of the bourgeoisie and then showing how they would close ranks to protect themselves from "outsiders." There is a hint of the latter in this predictable film, starring Diane Lane and Richard Gere as a successful married couple, but none of the former, leaving us with little to ponder other than the self-consciously "steamy" (read: not really steamy at all) sex scenes.

That the film celebrates the weathered beauty of Diane Lane is the most interesting aspect of the exercise. At 37, Lane has lived-and it shows in the lines on her face. She plays Constance Sumner (note the ironic name-it's that kind of movie), the happy mother of an eight-year-old son and devoted wife to successful businessman Charlie Sumner (Richard Gere). One day, in a cheesy scene that has her literally buffeted by the winds of fate, she blows into the arms of outrageously handsome Paul Martel (played by the outrageously handsome French star Olivier Martinez), a young French dealer of antiquarian books. Despite the evidence presented to us that she loves her husband and is happy with their sex life, she hesitantly embarks on an affair with the younger man.

Soon, they are doing it all over town-in café washrooms, apartment stairways and, of course, this being a Hollywood movie, in the impossibly amazing loft that Martel resides in. Charlie begins to suspect, hires a private detective to find out, and is shaken to the core to have his worst fears confirmed. As I mentioned, this is a Hollywood movie, so of course murder is the only solution (to be fair, the murder is one of the most effective scenes in the film-it does seem to show how these crimes of passion can sometimes "just happen").

By telling you about the murder, I'm not really ruining anything for you because the movie does that itself-it follows its single-minded track in such an old-fashioned way that everything is entirely predictable. In 1969-when Chabrol made the original-perhaps there was a scandalous frisson to his peeling back the curtain and showing that the bourgeoisie was as corrupt as the next class of citizen, but in our times there is nothing remotely scandalous about Constance's behaviour. Inexplicable, perhaps, given her happy marriage but not scandalous (although it would be hard for most people I know-men or woman-to resist the physical charms of Olivier Martinez).

The best part of the movie-other than its having given us a middle-aged heroine who is fully, splendidly sexual-comes in the final third. After Charlie has disposed of the body (and after we've been subjected to such cliches as the elevator getting stuck while Charlie is transporting the corpse), the guilt he feels, Constance's dawning realization about what he's done and their decision to try and get away with it, are all realistically conveyed. But, by this point, I bet few in the audience will care any longer.