As with Ian McEwan’s 1998 source novel, Roger Michell’s film opens with a couple picnicking in a deceptively blissful English idyll. Just as romantic evolutionary college lecturer Joe (Craig) is about to pop open the champagne for Claire (Morton), his sculpting star girlfriend, the scene turns into one of panting terror. A wayward hot air balloon, of all things, veers surreally into the picture. Passers-by – one of them being Joe – struggle to grab on to the tumescent orb in order to save the petrified solitary child supposedly manning the ropes. An eerie gush of wind suddenly tosses all but one of the would-be rescuers to the ground, but as the balloon soars onward and upward, he too is forced to let go, falling to his death.
Michell’s handling of this celebrated passage is poundingly intense, and if one were being spectacularly unkind, one could say that viscerally speaking Enduring Love has shot its load after these first traumatic minutes. But that would be to ignore the simmering caustic drama that follows.
As the shell-shocked Joe begins to fixate on that traumatic moment, he grows increasingly distant from his lover. Indeed, long after the ill-fated balloon has disappeared from the screen, it hangs over our protagonist. He stencils the details on every aspect of his life, a man just as surely obsessed as Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters or Aston Kutcher in Dude, Where’s My Car? The ensuing domestic disquiet is worsened by the appearance of Jeb (Ifans), another survivor of the tragedy. Stricken with some twisted mutation of puppy love, pitiable loneliness and post-traumatic stress disorder, Jeb’s advances on Joe become ever creepier, and Joe’s equally distempered response is to obsess about his stalker’s obsession.
Although Michell’s film is ultimately a little undone by the familiarity of its theme (yes, there’s a scene wherein our hero stumbles upon his stalker’s altar and the inevitable Clerambault’s showdown), Enduring Love is far too clever and far too engaging to be dismissed as a mere bunny-boiler. The permutations of its sinister mediation on desire are brilliantly realised by Craig and Ifans as they tumble into mutual madness. If that wasn’t quite discombobulating enough, there’s always the strange idea that this dark accomplished drama is brought to you by the man responsible for the witless Notting Hill. Now that’s an enduringly odd notion.