Jeremy Irons

Dead Ringers
$19.98
If its a well made, and truly disturbing move you desire, it would be hard to do better than Dead Ringers.

Lolita
$29.95
I love listening to books on CD, and this reading of "Lolita" by Jeremy Irons is, by far, the best I've heard!

Adrian Lyne, the director of the *movie* version "Lolita," says of Jeremy Irons' voiceover in the film : "He has the best voice in the business." And indeed he has.

"Lolita" is, arguably, the greatest novel written in the English language -- a book that no doubt means a great deal to Jeremy Irons. This is, clearly, not "just another gig" for Mr. Irons. The intelligence and respect he gives his interpretation of the novel is, like the novel itself, a thing of beauty.

What a uniquely exquisite gift Jermey Irons has given us reading Nabokov's masterpiece! Thank you so much. The love and work (lieben und arbiten) put into this CD are greatly appreciated.

M. Butterfly
$19.98
Strange story about a diplomat who falls in love and has an afffair with an apparent woman who turns out to be a man. I enjoyed the acting.

Damage
$24.98
Louis Malle's "Damage" is not the movie that launched Jeremy Iron's career as our reigning upper-crust sex pervert. That would be David Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers" shot 5 years before this film. Mr. Irons would follow this performance with turns in "M. Butterfly" and "Lolita", cementing his reputation as the actor most willing to go to the dark side of sexual perversion, a journey his characters never return from in one piece, if they survive at all. When I read Josephine Hart's 1991 novel of the same name, I wondered idly who could possibly play the leads and seeing Irons here, his casting is a no-brainer. There are very few actors who can pull off the tricky combination of aristocratic breeding and sexual depravity, but this is Irons' stock-in-trade.

When we first meet Dr. Stephen Fleming, he is a respected, high-ranking member of Parliament, with a lovely home complete with servants and an equally handsome family. Apart from feeling inferior to his father-in-law, who is the real source of the family affluence, Stephen's life seems about perfect in every conceivable way, his political star destined to rise even higher. But Stephen's a restless man; despite all his successes, he's wrestling with a mid-life crisis, at loose ends in a career that his ambitious wife wanted for him more than he wanted it himself. He is ripe for a Perfect Storm.

Enter the storm in the form of Anna, the dark and mysterious beauty who introduces herself to Stephen at a cocktail party. The two exchange an immediate frisson of carnal recognition, and Stephen is lost. The supremely inconvenient fact that Anna is dating and soon to be engaged to Stephen's son do not stop this pair from embarking on a torrid, wildly inappropriate, ultimately tragic sexual affair. Anna is damaged, she tells her new lover, and therefore dangerous. The 'damage' stems from the adolescent loss of her brother, in whose death Anna was either directly or indirectly complicit--that is for the audience to judge. Anna is not engaging in false advertising here, but her besotted lover does not heed what she says and stay away from her, to the detriment of everyone his life touches.

As Anna, Juliette Binoche has the more difficult, more unsympathetic role. Anna is an enigma, and enigmas are more easily explained on the page than onscreen, where a reader can get into a character's head. Binoche's Anna does a lot of unsettling stone-faced staring meant to be mesmerising, I guess, but despite her austere beauty which captures Hart's physical descripton of Anna closely enough, something vital has been lost in translation. Binoche's Anna lacks the force of any sort of vitality or spirit; for Malle it is enough that she just look beautiful and tortured. Binoche is very attractive indeed, but in the end, her face alone (and her propensity for wearing black stockings) is not sufficient explanation for all that transpires here. Is Anna a completely amoral self-serving Jezebel out to dismantle a happy family and betray all sorts of trust just because she can, being so irresistible, or does the greater share of blame fall on the men who singlemindedly (or using a lesser head) pursue the forbidden fruit she seems to offer? Whichever you believe, the book offers a more substantial portrait of a complicated woman than the one Binoche offers here.

This is essentially a two-actor showcase, and just about every inch of both actors is on display, particularly Irons. Some of the love scenes are unintentially hilarious; if I'm not wrong, Binoche and Irons may have actually invented several new lovemaking positions, none of them elegant to watch. Miranda Richardson as the wronged wife and Rupert Graves as the wronged son/fiance bring memorable poignancy as the collateral damage in this doomed affair. Even as this movie sickens, you will be unable to look away until the inevitable derailment.