Killing Me Softly -R-Rated Edition-

Product Description Red-hot Heather Graham (Boogie Nights) and Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love) sizzle like never before in this steamy sexual odyssey about the addictive and deadly powers of illicit passion. Too much of a good thing can be deadly. When Alice (Graham), an American living inLondon, meets Adam (Fiennes), a handsome adventurer, she's lured out of her safe, mundane life to pursue an affair that brings her to the heights of excitement and ecstasy. But when Adam's mysteriousand violent past begins to surface, Alice investigates and learns that Adam's pastand her future may both point to murder! Amazon.com It's easy to identify the biggest attraction of Killing Me Softly: two fetching actors (Heather Graham, Joseph Fiennes) and lots of nudity--especially in the unrated version. It's harder to choose the bigger liability: the dialogue howlers (as Fiennes binds Graham in ropes, she says, "Sometimes I feel like I don't know you") or the incredibly obvious solution to the big mystery. The story is an unofficial update of Hitchcock's Suspicion: a new wife wonders whether her unbelievably charismatic husband might be a murderer. The Chinese filmmaker Chen Kaige ( Farewell My Concubine) turns out to be exactly the wrong director for this overheated slice of l'amour fou in London, but with the hopeless pairing of Graham and Fiennes as the passionate lovers, he didn't have much of a chance. A nicely romantic Patrick Doyle score is the only reason not to hit the Mute button and enjoy the visuals. --Robert Horton