Damage (1992)
Damage is a 1992 drama movie directed by Louis Malle, with a running time of 1h 51m. It stars Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche and Miranda Richardson.
Stephen Fleming is a British MP with a composed marriage, a grown son, and a career on the rise. Then he meets Anna, his son's fiancee, and something in him gives way. Louis Malle's chamber drama, adapted by David Hare from Josephine Hart's novel, watches a disciplined man quietly dismantle his own life. Jeremy Irons plays the descent inward, Juliette Binoche keeps Anna unreadable, and Miranda Richardson, as the wife, holds the film's moral weight. Cold, elegant, and clinical about desire that arrives without warning and refuses to be reasoned with.
Quick answers
What is Damage about?
Stephen Fleming is a British MP with a composed marriage, a grown son, and a career on the rise. Then he meets Anna, his son's fiancee, and something in him gives way. Louis Malle's chamber drama, adapted by David Hare from Josephine Hart's novel, watches a disciplined man quietly dismantle his own life. Jeremy Irons plays the descent inward, Juliette Binoche keeps Anna unreadable, and Miranda Richardson, as the wife, holds the film's moral weight. Cold, elegant, and clinical about desire that arrives without warning and refuses to be reasoned with.
When was Damage released?
Damage was released on 2 December 1992.
How long is Damage?
Damage runs 1h 51m.
Who made Damage?
Damage was directed by Louis Malle.
Where can I watch Damage?
Damage is available on Fandango at Home and Google Play.
Where to watch Damage
Rent: Fandango at Home, Google Play
Buy: Fandango at Home, Google Play
Cast
- Jeremy Irons as Dr. Stephen Fleming
- Juliette Binoche as Anna Barton
- Miranda Richardson as Ingrid Fleming
- Rupert Graves as Martyn Fleming
- Peter Stormare as Peter Wetzler
- Gemma Clarke as Sally Fleming
- Ian Bannen as Edward Lloyd
- Julian Fellowes as Donald Lyndsay, MP
- Leslie Caron as Elizabeth Prideaux
- Tony Doyle as Prime Minister
- Ray Gravell as Raymond
- Susan Engel as Miss Snow
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A few thoughts on Damage
Malle's restraint sits well beside other studies of respectable people undone by obsession. Try Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful for the same suburban unraveling, or Michael Haneke's chilly precision in The Piano Teacher. Josephine Hart's source novel is even more austere on the page. The mood throughout is control curdling into compulsion, watched at a clinical distance.
Affairs that quietly wreck a respectable life
Damage watches a composed MP dismantle his own career and marriage the moment desire arrives without warning. Unfaithful traces the same slow unraveling from the other side of a marriage, Closer keeps four people locked in overlapping betrayals, Dream Lover turns obsession into something closer to a trap, and The Deep Blue Sea watches a woman give up everything for a feeling she cannot reason with.
Desire that crosses a line and doesn't apologize for it
Anna is engaged to Stephen's son, and Damage never pretends that detail doesn't matter, it builds the whole film around it. Cruel Intentions plays manipulation and seduction as a game with real casualties, the two Poison Ivy films send a calculating young woman into a family that isn't prepared for her, Battle in Heaven stares at class and desire without flinching, and Scarlet Street lets infatuation curdle into ruin.
Elegant, restrained dramas about desire that costs everything
Louis Malle films Stephen's collapse with a cold, clinical eye rather than melodrama, and these films share that same controlled distance from very hot material. The Sheltering Sky watches a marriage dissolve against a vast foreign landscape, Heat and Dust ties a forbidden colonial-era affair to its lasting consequences, and The Belly of an Architect studies obsession as a slow physical decline.