Love Affair

This remake of Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember (1957), the vacuous weepie to which Sleepless in Seattle tipped its cap, went straight to video in Britain after a dismal outing in the US. As 'written' by Warren Beatty and Robert Towne - the updating aside, it's a virtual carbon copy of McCarey's film - the tale of a hesitant romance between Beatty's playboy sports celeb and Bening's music teacher looks little more than a vanity project. Impossibly exotic and glossy, its emotional dynamics make no sense today, so that all we're left with is a trite celebration of Warren and Annette as lovers made for each other. Only one scene works: when Beatty confronts Bening over why she failed to meet him as planned at the Empire State Building, his playing of humiliation, bruised vanity, confusion and uneasy bluffing sets the screen alight for a minute or two. But that's it. Even Hepburn is wasted.