Film
The Last Affair
A 1976 drama about infidelity and bodily autonomy, where a woman seeks conception outside her marriage to a sterile husband. It's intimate and uncomfortable—less interested in judgment than in the impossible choices people make when desire and duty collide. For viewers drawn to cinema that treats adult complications seriously.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you like small, uneasy domestic dramas where the moral knots are tied slowly and the film trusts a tight cast to carry long, quiet silences.
Skip it if you want brisk momentum, since its ideas arrive through talk and stillness rather than plot, and its deliberate pacing can test patience on a restless night.
What it asks of you: Settle in for an unhurried eighty minutes with a frank, uncomfortable premise, and be ready to sit with awkwardness rather than be rescued from it.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Kramer vs. Kramer1979
Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman navigate marriage dissolution with intelligence and pain. A film about adults making hard choices without easy answers, where everyone's right and everyone's wrong.
But It's very much a product of its decade, and the emotional beats can feel slightly calculated now.
An Unmarried Woman1978
Jill Clayburgh at her finest as a woman reclaiming autonomy after divorce. Messy, funny, sometimes infuriating—entirely alive to what it means to want things your own way.
But The pacing is deliberately slow; if you want momentum, this will feel like watching someone process feelings in real time.
The Graduate1967
Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin navigates desire, family pressure, and the suffocation of expectation. A masterpiece of sexual anxiety disguised as a comedy about adulthood.
But It's been canonised to death, and the satire can feel broad compared to what it was actually saying about loneliness.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Last Affair
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Contempt1963
Both films treat infidelity not as a moral failing but as a symptom of something deeper—the distance between what people promise and what they actually are.
Godard's meditation on a marriage breaking apart—the space between two bodies widening frame by frame. Bardot and Piccoli are luminous and doomed.
But It's formally experimental and glacial; the marriage is dissected rather than felt. Requires patience.
More like this (6)
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore1974
Ellen Burstyn and Martin Scorsese on a widow reclaiming her life. Tender and tough—a film about women's desire that doesn't apologise or soft-pedal.
But It meanders deliberately, which is part of its charm but not everyone's patience.
Scenes from a Marriage1974
Bergman's masterwork: Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson in six brutal, luminous episodes about what marriage actually is underneath the ceremony. Devastating.
But Nearly five hours long, filmed in closeup, designed to watch people sit with their feelings. Not escape.
A Place for Lovers1968
Marcello Mastroianni and Faye Dunaway in Venice, wrestling with infidelity and time. Gorgeously shot, melancholic—a love film made by someone who understands love ends.
But It's slow and oblique. If you need plot, you will feel like nothing is happening.
Husbands1970
Cassavetes, Falk, and Rowlands in a shattered, improvised explosion about male friendship and marriage. Raw, unflinching, sometimes savage.
But It's nearly three hours of shouting men. Cassavetes' intensity can read as self-indulgent if you're not with him.
The Red Shoes1948
Both hinge on a woman's desire—not as decoration but as the central plot—and what happens when that desire cannot be contained by the roles others assign her.
Powell and Pressburger's obsessive masterpiece about a woman torn between two men and two versions of her own ambition. The choreography alone is worth your evening.
But It's a ballet film first. If you don't care about dance, the extended sequences might feel indulgent.
The Accidental Tourist1988
Like The Last Affair, it takes the messy truth of human connection—desire, grief, infidelity, the gap between who we are and who we're supposed to be—and refuses to resolve it into comfort.
William Hurt's widower learns to live again through Kathleen Turner. A film about bodies and touch and the quiet courage required to want someone new after loss.
But It's deliberately gentle and small-scale. If you want stakes, this is too interior to satisfy.
People
Cast
Ron DeanDavid Hart
Jack WallaceLarry- Debbie DanMary Hart
Del CloseSparks
- A. AlexanderValana
- Tink GreyWoman Selecting Monk
- Amber AndersTeenage Girl
- Paul FredricksFirst Man Chosen by Mary
- Jerry GoodmanSecond Man Chosen by Mary
- Jack HafferkampPriest