Intersection [Mark Rydell, 1994]:
A largely forgotten remake of Les Choses de la vie (1970) by Claude Sautet (forgotten, despite featuring a stellar cast of then superstars: Richard Gere, Sharon Stone, Lolita Davidovich and Martin Landau specifically), Intersection seemed to be released at a curious intersection in 90s cinema. Its tone and aesthetics are very much in step with the cycle of post-Jagged Edge (1985), post-Fatal Attraction (1987) thrillers from the early 1990s, such as Shattered (1991), Dead Again (1991), Basic Instinct (1992), Final Analysis (1992) and others - films that wove themes of crisis and infidelity around mostly affluent characters, and used them to indulge in thrillers that often weren't very thrilling, but rather oddly dreamlike - however, it was released in competition with films like Pulp Fiction (1994) and Clerks (1994). The culture was moving on from this kind of adult contemporary cinema and embraced the comparatively more vibrant and profane works of a new generation, and as such Intersection received almost entirely negative reviews and sank like a stone into the dark waters of cultural oblivion.
The general criticisms of the film from the time seem fair; Gere's character isn't sympathetic and his life crisis at the center of the drama comes from a place of entitlement and egotism. It's difficult to follow this character on an existential journey when nothing beyond the vagaries of life and death are ever really at stake. That said, I found the strange scene towards the end of the film, in which the protagonist meets what could be, figuratively or even literally, himself as an old man (complete with a granddaughter modelled on his latest mistress) to be so fascinating and quietly surreal in nature that it brought together the various themes of the film and elevated the third act.
