If anyone thinks that we've seen the last remake of Love Affair, think again. The Indian cinema has done a version of it a few years after this film came out. This story has a timeless appeal that Warren Beatty certainly recognized.
Anyone who has seen the original Love Affair and the remake An Affair To Remember will know the plot of this film exactly. Warren Beatty and Annette Bening fill the shoes of previous lovers Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne and Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. With very few deviations except those to update the story this film has the same plot.
One of those deviations has our star crossed lovers Warren Beatty and Annette Bening meeting on a transoceanic flight to Sydney, Australia which is certainly a lot of time to get acquainted. They get even better acquainted when they are forced to land on a Pacific island where Beatty's grandmother Katharine Hepburn has a nice tropical place. The kind of setting where romance has to bloom.
This was Katharine Hepburn's last big screen appearance, she did one more television film and then her Parkinson's Disease and other ailments that beset people of the age she lived to forced her retirement. I'll bet she never thought she would in 1939 wind up in a remake of a film doing a part Maria Ouspenskaya created. She does it grand style though and only Kate can make an old Anglo-Saxon expletive sound elegant.
That Warren Beatty got nominated for a Razzie award for remaking Love Affair is a disgrace. This is old fashioned romantic entertainment, the kind that old Hollywood used to do. I think Beatty and everyone connected with this Love Affair should be proud.
I notice that Leo McCarey who wrote and directed Love Affair and An Affair To Remember is prominently listed on the screen credits. He'd be proud of this remake himself, I'm sure.
