Desejos

I just watched this movie again, after having seen it twice before in 1996-97. It has held up pretty well. It steals a lot from Hitchcock (the "I had the dream again" key phrase from "Rebecca", the superficial psychoanalysis from "Marnie", the setting of the climax from "Vertigo"), but Phil Joanou's direction is farly static - until the last 20 minutes. The two leads, Gere and Basinger, do a solid but routine job in their roles; it's the secondary characters who give this film a life of its own: Eric Roberts (an outstanding performance) as the edgy husband, Uma Thurman as the patient (whose character is the only one who remains an enigma right to the end), the detective who keeps making insinuations, Gere's colleague who gets panicky when he has to testify, etc. If nothing else, Joanou shows a talent for allowing his actors to do their stuff. (**1/2)