| Alfie (Jude Law) is a limo driver, an avowed womanizer in New York with an incorrigible penchant for FBB (“face, boobs, bum”). Vain and narcissistic, Alfie sees women as little more than playmates in bed and makes no apologies for the way he dumps one woman for another. He has a sort of “steady” girlfriend he could “play house” with—Julie (Marissa Tomei)—a single mother whose toddler Alfie adores. In the back seat of his limo he satisfies a horny housewife Dorie (Jane Krakowski) who claims her husband hasn’t touched her in five months. He keeps Nikki (Sienna Miller) for convenience, a reserve for lonely nights. He takes up with Liz (Susan Sarandon), a wealthy businesswoman who’s nobody’s fool, and on the side gets into a fling with his best friend Marlon’s woman, Lonette (Nia Long). Indeed, his life is a parade of sexual conquests, until the tables are turned. The happy-go-lucky playboy comes under a cancer threat, starts to review his life, and realizes certain truths about hedonistic ways.
Jude Law delivers a magnificent performance as the unapologetic heartbreaker. And the women, while playing supporting roles, are the perfect spur for Law’s animated portrayal. At first Alfie could be mistaken for a comedy, as director Charles Shyer makes him deliver monologues at the camera—as though thinking aloud while having eye contact with the viewer. As used in this film, this device succeeds at making a viewer feel Alfie is taking him into his confidence, if not altogether voyeuristic at times. But this is by no means a regular comedy. As the story unfolds, it becomes obvious that Alfie’s cheekiness and brash confidence are a well-calculated foil for his pathetic transformation. Law has a face the camera loves. If the close-ups on Law captures Alfie’s sassiness and cold-heartedness, they also immortalize his pathos when he realizes that he can not win in his own game.
Any man who’s in the habit of recklessly dumping women could learn a thing or two from Alfie. Any woman who’s ever been dumped by a man can heave a sigh of relief, or even a triumphant cry, that such a movie has been made. It shows the evil, the total absence of charity, in philandering, an activity that seems to have become acceptable in this age of contraception and the so-called sexual liberation. Some precious advice would best be heeded—coming from the character of the white-haired widower, given to Alfie—such as, “Next time, think before unzipping!” But the ultimate message of this cautionary tale is spoken by a remorseful Alfie himself: You can have everything, but if you have no peace of mind, you have nothing.
(Date
Reviewed: February 11, 2005)
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