Forever Mine 1999

The highly stylized film begins in the early 80’s as first class airline passenger, the mysterious and facially scarred Manuel Esquema (Fiennes) reflects on his earlier and significantly different life. Flashbacks take us a decade and a half earlier to a posh Miami hotel where we find that Esquema was really a dashing young cabana boy named Alan Riply. His best friend is fellow cabana boy Javier Cesti (Laresca), who often suggests that the pair would make much more money if they worked for some connections he had in the drug trafficking trade. As fate has it, one day Alan is assigned to the cabana of a wealthy businessman/politician named Mark Brice (Liotta) and his much younger and uber seductive blonde wife, Ella (Mol). Instantly, Alan realizes that he is destined to be with Ella forever and her marriage doesn’t deter him in the least from making direct advances. Fortunately for Alan, Ella confesses that she’s unhappy and unfulfilled in her marriage, but she’s fearful of her powerful mate, so she is reluctant to initiate an affair with Riply. His advances and his raw sexuality are too much for Ella to resist, so the two begin a brief, torrid affair, always careful to avoid detection. When Ella and her husband leave the resort and return to New York, she assumes that the romance is, regrettably but necessarily, over. Not according to Alan who, despite buddy Javier’s advice, moves to the big city to pursue Ella. For another brief time the affair is rekindled and all seems magical until Ella’s guilt forces her to confess to irate husband Mark. To get revenge, the cuckold Mark uses his connections to have Alan falsely implicated in a drug bust and sentenced to a long haul in jail (which he could have avoided if he’d only agreed to stop pursuing Ella.) Even prison can’t stop the blinding lust Alan feels for Ella. He writes deeply moving love letters to her until one is intercepted by her frustrated husband. To end things once and for all, he has a fake escape attempt conducted, during which Riply is to be gunned down. Upon hearing the news of her lover’s fate from her guilty-looking mate, Ella accuses him of ordering the hit, which he half-heartedly denies, secure in the belief that his marital ordeal has ended at last. Flash forward to the time in which the story began. The gunshot-disfigured Riply, assuming the name Esquema and accompanied by his equally well-dressed buddy Javier from the cabana days, is arriving by plane at New York. There, he has a meeting with his former nemesis, Mark Brice, who now is in political and legal trouble, even facing time in a federal penitentiary for his various misdeeds. Now altered facially (perhaps not enough to convince the average viewer), Esquema’s true identity is hidden, so he works on a deal to do money-laundering and influence peddling for Brice. The reason is clear; Esquema/Riply wants another chance to see and be near Ella, who also fails to recognize him at a dinner meeting. Things come to a head when Esquema/Riply reveals his true identity to Ella and expresses his desire to be with her. At the same time, identity still unknown to Mark, he agrees to a plan in which he helps him avoid a long stint at the Federal Penitentiary in exchange for his wife. As a reunited and blissfully happy Ella and Riply leave New York forever, Mark puts two and two together and furiously pursues them to exact violent revenge. The outcome of the pursuit and the players’ fates may not be clear in each viewer’s perception.