The loftiness — and supreme silliness — of The Silence of Adultery’s title drew me in because it was almost Bergmanesque. Doesn’t it conjure mental images of Erland Josephson or Max von Sydow meeting Harriet Andersson or Ingrid Thulin in a barn in rural Sweden for joyless assignations before an indifferent, possibly nonexistent God? And while we’re asking unserious questions, if your adultery is silent does that mean you’re doing it wrong?
This 1995 Lifetime movie isn’t prurient enough to provide an unequivocal answer, but there isn’t much heat between the married Rachel Lindsey (Kate Jackson) and Michael Harvott (Robert Desiderio), a recently separated father. They’re introduced when Michael brings his nonverbal son to the barn where Rachel offers equine therapy to autistic kids. Her qualifications are unclear — the script says she isn’t a doctor, despite IMDb calling her one — and don’t matter, anyway. Autism is merely a plot device to introduce the lovers.
“How the hell do you know what’s going on if nobody’s talking about it?” Michael asks of nonverbal communication shortly after they meet. Rachel gives him a trite answer about listening with your heart, but they try their luck with other organs as well. Screenwriter Susan Rhinehart (Baby Snatcher) and director Steven Hilliard Stern (Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story) build no romantic or sexual tension between them, which makes for “a queer anti-climax,” to quote a much funnier telefilm about a straying wife.
For all his tender voice-of-reason posturing, Michael is a lazy sexual opportunist, moving in on the first woman he meets, married or not, who can potentially care for his son. Rachel, like Susan Lucci’s character in The Woman Who Sinned, is merely lonely; her architect husband (Art Hindle, Patty Duke’s dreamboat in Before and After) is so consumed with work that she ponders calling his secretary to schedule marital spats. Eldest daughter Sylvie (Tori McPetrie) knows he takes her mom for granted, and mother Olive (Patricia Gage) is particularly sensitive to the dangers circling Rachel’s marriage.
Movies like The Silence of Adultery usually come with a ribald or disapproving best friend (Connie Sellecca had one of each in She Led Two Lives), and it’s a nice change of pace for that role to be filled by Olive, who is warm and perceptive without being a scold or pushover. When Rachel insists she’s a big girl who can take care of herself, her mother simply replies “I don’t think so.” Gage, only eight years older than Jackson, looks like more of a contemporary (shades of Jane Greer and Mary Tyler Moore in Just Between Friends), but one of the film’s best scenes comes when Olive spills a secret from her long and mostly happy marriage.
Jackson often played spirited and sometimes loopy characters (see: Thin Ice, Death Cruise, Killer Bees, Satan’s School for Girls and Sweet Deception) or resourceful women determined to save the day (Death at Love House, The Cold Heart of a Killer). In The Silence of Adultery, as in Inmates: A Love Story, she plays someone who isn’t carefree and doesn’t have all the answers. She can’t coast on charm or pluck and doesn’t have to — her dramatic chops are in fine form even when the material’s lacking.
As the restrained and rueful Rachel, one of her nicest moments is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it exchange when her youngest daughter complains about being stuck in traffic (“This is just too stupid. We’re so close and we’re so far!”) and Jackson replies “That’s the story of my life, sweetheart.”
Streaming and DVD availability
The Silence of Adultery hasn’t been released on DVD and isn’t on authorized streaming platforms. You can currently find it on YouTube, from which it periodically disappears.
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Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
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