DVD
Upcoming Release Calendar
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Recent DVD/Video Releases
65
Adoration
42
Aliens in the Attic
56
American Violet
44
Answer Man, The
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil![]()
54
Bruno
55
Casi Divas
63
Cheri
83
Drag Me to Hell![]()
24
Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat
76
Every Little Step
70
Fados
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
74
Humpday
32
I Love You, Beth Cooper
50
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
81
Il Divo![]()
54
Is Anybody There?
32
Land of the Lost
74
Lemon Tree
40
Limits of Control, The
43
Love 'N Dancing
63
Medicine for Melancholy
34
My Life in Ruins
51
My Sister's Keeper
48
Not Forgotten
76
Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!
50
Nothing Like the Holidays
26
Objective, The
42
Orphan
78
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
48
Proposal, The
39
Spread
83
Star Trek![]()
55
Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
72
Thirst
35
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
28
Ugly Truth, The
66
Unmistaken Child
88
Up![]()
45
Whatever Works
34
Year One
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Affair of Love, An

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 23 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 4 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Romance
Written by: Philippe Blasband
Directed by: Frédéric Fonteyne
Release Date:
Theatrical: August 11, 2000
DVD: January 23, 2001
Running Time: 80 minutes, Color
Origin: France / Switzerland / Belgium / Luxembourg
Summary
RATING: R for strong sexual content
Starring Nathalie Baye, Sergi López, Jacques Viala, Paul Pavel, and Sylvie Van den Elsen
It began as a purely sexual arrangement between anonymous strangers. Now, some time after it has ended, a woman (Baye) and a man (Lopez) recall their unusual affair in separate interviews. (Fine Line Features)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Gilles' Wife
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Fonteyne edges closer than most to capturing the mysterious rhythms of liaisons -- pornographique, romantique, and otherwise.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson
By boiling the characters down to the most basic emotions and eliminating lifestyle-specific idiosyncrasies, we can enter the world of the story with ease.
Read Full Review >TNT RoughCut J. Rentilly
A brilliant, haunting film.
San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham
The audience, too, will be sorry to see this fleeting, beautifully made French film end.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
A passionate, heart-wrenching film that is a must-see for any romantic.
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
An extraordinarily perfect little film: A bittersweet drama that explores sexuality and love, and their reverberations across the landscape of human emotions.
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
It is about the desiring itself, not about what they desire. That makes it more intriguing than if we knew their secret--and sexier.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
This wee, discreet little movie has a certain rueful intelligence about the ways we rather carelessly talk ourselves into love--and out of it as well.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Sophisticated entertainment of the less-is-more school.
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Baye and Lopez are excellent, as always.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
This movie really belongs to Baye and Lopez, both so skillful that they almost make you forget that what you're watching is close to a stunt--one oddly evocative of Graham Greene in its doomed romanticism but at times also minimalist to a fault.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Smells much more like real life than the immediate mating that occurs between expensive movie stars on Hollywood soundstages.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
This sweet, pensive gabfest is neither conventionally romantic nor pornographic.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Has the rare distinction of being slight and tragic at the same time.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Jay Carr
A bit of a cop-out, wrapping in wistful sentimentality a failure to acknowledge a connection that is more than epidermal.
Chicago Tribune John Petrakis
Halfway through, it becomes clear that the filmmakers don't know how to end the film.
Film.com Robert Horton
When the film is sexy, it's truly sexy, assuming that you believe sexiness has something to do with the exploration of a connection between people.
Read Full Review >Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard
Ultimately too slight and opaque to inspire much ardor.
LA Weekly Ella Taylor
A delicate mood piece that owes much of its languorous charm to the understated intelligence of its two leads.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Rita Kempley
A bittersweet duet convincingly, if unexcitingly, performed by Baye and Lopez.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Pat C. gave it a3:
Tries to clean up its act, but just isn't engaging.
Ed S. gave it a10:
Great adult movie.
Le Liason Filmographique De Gilbert Mulroneygateaux gave it an 8:
I'd heard the title "Un Liason Pornographique"...and that scared me away. Then I saw a film on some Satelite Despair-channel or other by the name of "An Affair Of Love" not long ago. And was agog to see it was the same bloody film, with an infinitely better - or at least, non-French friendly - title. It's a good film too - stripping the whole "Love And Sex" idea to its bare essentials and emerging as probably the best film on the subject since "When Harry Met Sally". It's also amusing to think of the countless shiny-foreheaded types who were tricked by the title into thinking it was some sort of Playboy Freeview. Ha!
