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It’s never a good sign when a film sits on the shelf for three years before dribbling out with little fanfare. The pandemic probably played its part – lord knows it’s disrupted enough in movieland – but it’s just as likely the delay was due to lack of confidence in the product rather than lack of opportunity: The Affair, based on Simon Mawer’s Booker-nominated bestseller, The Glass Room, is maddeningly boring; constantly neutering its greatest assets.

On paper this should have been a sure thing: an awards-baiting epic with a story stretching from the 1920s to the 1960s, precision-tooled for Thanking The Academy. Our heroes look on from their architecturally marvelous – and highly symbolic – home as first the Nazis, and then the Soviet Union marches in, bringing intolerance and devastation with them. Jewish newlyweds Liesal and Viktor must choose between flight and persecution as the German forces arrive.

From Vertical Entertainment, The Affair, starring Carice van Houten, Hanna Alström, and Claes Bang, is now available in select theaters and on VOD services. This period piece hearkens back to classical World War II dramas, with powerful performances from its cast, and is definitely worth your time. It's admittedly outside of the Daily Dead wheelhouse, but with Claes Bang's version of Dracula being one of my favorite performances of the infamous vampire ever, I reached out to see if he'd be up for talking about both Dracula and The Affair. Thankfully, he was very excited to discuss both roles in our video interview you can check out below!

The Affair Synopsis: "In 1930s Czechoslovakia, newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer are filled with optimism and happiness in their new home. But all too soon, extramarital temptations bring out their darkest secrets and desires. As Liesel turns to her sensual friend Hana...

In 1928, Fritz Tugendhat and his new wife Grete — both German-born Jews — commissioned architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich to build them a glass house on a hilltop in the city of Brno, Czechoslovakia. The Villa Tugendhat was to be a new home for a new Europe: sleek, spare, and open to the light of the outside world. Its functionalist principles expressed the hope for a future without secrets or self-denial, and its long glass walls reflected the freedoms that Grete expected to define the rest of the 20th century. Less than 10 years later, the Tugendhats were forced to flee in the looming shadow of a Fascist occupation. Czechoslovakia became the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and the Villa Tugendhat was turned into the local offices of the Messerschmitt corporation, which engineered much of Hitler’s air force.

Adapted from Simon Mawer’s bestselling 2009 novel “The Glass Room...

Simon Mawer’s 2009 historical novel “The Glass Room” was well-regarded on both sides of the Atlantic, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and seemingly destined to be filmed sooner rather than later. It was, after all, a decades-spanning saga of illicit desire, betrayal and riches-to-rags survival against the shifting backdrop of the Holocaust and the rise of Communism in the former Czechoslovakia. You wouldn’t guess its lofty origins from watching its eventual adaptation as “The Affair,” and not just because Mawer’s tale is now hidden behind the most generic title imaginable — as if placed in witness protection, to prevent any parties interested in its former identity from finding it. Despite a fine Continental cast and gleaming production values, Czech helmer Julius Ševčík has made a muddled, maudlin hash of what ought to have been a sure thing; limping to a U.S. release two years after its European premiere,...

A real-life architectural gem is the centerpiece of The Affair — and, in many ways, its most compelling character. The building is a modernist masterpiece, completed in 1930, when the term “modernist” embodied the thrill of risk-taking in a new age.

As in the movie’s source material, Simon Mawer’s 2009 novel The Glass Room, the house is a hilltop construction of clean geometric lines, designed to hold light, and its changes in ownership over the years map out the tumultuous history of 20th century Czechoslovakia. Abstract concepts and aesthetic ideals kick-start the handsome yet muddled feature, but, as ...

A real-life architectural gem is the centerpiece of The Affair — and, in many ways, its most compelling character. The building is a modernist masterpiece, completed in 1930, when the term “modernist” embodied the thrill of risk-taking in a new age.

As in the movie’s source material, Simon Mawer’s 2009 novel The Glass Room, the house is a hilltop construction of clean geometric lines, designed to hold light, and its changes in ownership over the years map out the tumultuous history of 20th century Czechoslovakia. Abstract concepts and aesthetic ideals kick-start the handsome yet muddled feature, but, as ...

The Affair Trailer — Julius Sevcik‘s The Affair (2019) movie trailer has been released by Vertical Entertainment. The Affair trailer stars Hanna Alström, Carice van Houten, Claes Bang, Alexandra Borbély, Martin Hofmann, Petra Buckova, Olga Plojhar Bursikova, Brian Caspe, Kevin Michael Clarke, Karel Dobrý, Zuzana Fialová, and Jim High. Crew Andrew Shaw and Simon Mawer wrote [...]

Continue reading: The Affair Trailer: Carice van Houten & Hanna Alström Have a Forbidden Love During WWII in Julius Sevcik’s Movie...

Czech-Shot “The Glass Room,” currently in post-production, is deeply influenced by an aspect of the nation’s history not often spoken about by admirers — its remarkable architecture: For generations, the most treasured buildings were home to tragic events.

The Villa Tugendhat in the eastern province of Moravia, a stunning, poured-concrete dwelling that represents a breakthrough in the functionalist movement of the 1920s, is a prime example: It saw its German Jewish owners, Fritz and Grete Tugendhat, forced to flee the country in the 1930s, just ahead of the Nazi occupation. “This house can be really cold,” says director Julius Sevcik. “And awful. Especially in the winter with all the dead-looking trees.” This unconventional assessment of one of the Czech Republic’s prize modernist gems is a good fit for its unfortunate story. Commissioned by the Tugendhats in 1928, the villa was empty by 1938, when the duo escaped to Switzerland.

After being...

“Game of Thrones” star Carice van Houten will star in “Locus of Control,” playing a prison psychologist who starts an affair with a serial sex offender who appears to be ready to be released back into society.

The latter role will be played by Marwan Kenzari, the Dutch actor who plays Jafar in Guy Ritchie’s upcoming “Aladdin” movie and who has starred in films including “The Mummy” and “Wolf.”

Dutch actress Halina Reijn will helm the picture, her directorial debut. She worked with van Houten on the Paul Verhoeven movie “Black Book,” and Bryan Singer’s “Valkyrie.” “Locus of Control” will be the first outing for the pair’s production banner, Man Up.

Van Houten is best-known as Lady Melisandre, the Red Priestess, in HBO juggernaut “Game of Thrones.” Shooting on “Locus of Control” is underway and will run through the end of the month. Van Houten is making...

From Oscar favourite The King's Speech to ex-Booker winner Wolf Hall, art that retells events is now the mainstay of films and books. But the concentration on reality stops writers using the imagination for storytelling

Throughout their history, movies have been talked about in terms of dreaming: studios are "dream factories"; Hollywood is "the land of dreams". But scanning the list of contenders for this year's Oscars, such descriptions feels misplaced. The most striking thing about the leading films of the last 12 months is how many draw their inspiration from fact.

The leading Oscar contenders, The King's Speech and The Social Network, both offer fictionalised portraits of familiar but enigmatic public figures – a monarch and a monumentally successful entrepreneur. But it's also true of other hotly tipped releases such as The Fighter (about boxer Micky Ward) and 127 Hours (about rock climber Aron Ralston), as well as films still to hit...