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Damage: INSPIRATION FOR THE NETFLIX SERIES OBSESSION

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The effect is powerful: here is naked obsession, sulfurous, total, scarcely possible to live with.”

Damage is a 1992 romantic psychological drama film directed and produced by Louis Malle and starring Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche, Miranda Richardson, Rupert Graves, and Ian Bannen. Adapted by David Hare from the 1991 novel Damage by Josephine Hart, the film is about a British politician (Irons) who has a sexual relationship with his son's soon-to-be-fiancée and becomes increasingly obsessed with her. Richardson was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance as the aggrieved wife of the film's main character. Damage is a novella. It is a short terse sizzling little gem of a book about betrayal, passion and what happens when your one wrong choice causes your life to go out of control. The first chapter of this novel is one of the most perfect in English literature. It's really quite amazing, and there are passages throughout that are nearly as good. The novel is perhaps not perfect as a whole, and one sometimes becomes irritated at the "oh aren't we so frightfully correct and conventional" self observational conversations spouted by the characters as a sort of authorial shorthand. On the other hand, the way the novel simmers under its lid and slowly uncoils itself to render its death bite is quite masterly. And there is much sigh-inducing gorgeousness in Hart's prose. It's a sad tale, part Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, part Nabokov's Lolita in its forbidden (age-gap, but not pedophilic) love, deception and existence of a peripheral character with a mysterious pull, and probably several other novels I'm missing. The most tragic figure in the story is probably Fleming's wife, Ingrid, decent and guileless, and thus eminently destroyable. They are presented as equally culpable and yet, equally, without blame. They are damaged and are destined to destroy not only themselves but others.

When art imitates life, it’s exciting,” said Miller of the series’ similarity to ongoing UK political scandals. “We do live in a country – it’s not really a meritocracy a lot of the time. We live in a place where if you’ve had access to education of a certain standard and calibre, and if you go through the motions, you probably have aspirations of being in…” They involve a degree of mild violence and of domination (there are references to slavedom, to being tied, and blindfolded, of Anna giving herself over to his will, of being physically ‘arranged’). These scenes leave us with a sense of the brutality of Fleming’s sexual desire, and of Anna’s desire to submit to it. Destructive Romance: Because of his love for Anna, Stephen loses his job and his family. He ends up alone in a small flat in Southern France. Friends, I wish I could tell you more, but I do not wish to spoil the story for anyone .. Please do yourself a favor, if you can tolerate adultery, jump into this story blindly.

The main character in this book has always tried to do the right thing. He is a serious straight laced man He's a A loving father and a devoted husband and he is happy in his somewhat sterile but pleasant marriage. To me, Josephine's belief that literature can make a difference was inspiring. Though she was hugely sophisticated and glamorous, and no stranger to the benefits of working a room and making connections, the fact that so many of us were willingly beguiled by her was because of her passionate belief in art. There was something elemental about her. The first person narrator of the novel is an unnamed medical doctor turned politician (called Dr Stephen Fleming in the Louis Malle film) whose promotion from Member of Parliament (MP) to cabinet member is imminent. Just then the MP is casually introduced to his grown-up son's enigmatic girlfriend Anna and helplessly falls for her. For as long as it lasts, Martyn, his son, has no idea that his father is having an extramarital affair with his girlfriend (and later fiancée), and Anna does not seem to mind being a young man's partner and simultaneously his father's lover and object of desire. The MP enjoys a brief period of sexual bliss, meeting Anna in various European cities and having sex with her in unlikely places. Eventually, he buys them a small flat in central London where they meet on a regular basis. Fact: Damage is an excellent title and describes perfectly what happens when obsession overrides sanity. Or, in the eyes of our MC, what happens when one finally finds "passion." (passion= being a man whore pyscho....but whatever. Also, this fact is turning into an opinion....)The novel is populated by boringly correct English types who seem almost parodically perfect, civil and discreet. Their world is slowly and quietly devastated by the entrance into it of an almost blameless femme fatale, a damaged girl harboring a terrible secret so corrosive that it seems to destroy all she touches, though the recipients of her attentions fail to see -- or do see and ignore -- the inevitably painful consequences. The story is told from the perspective of a genteel middle-aged Englishman, Dr. Stephen Fleming, a physician and member of Parliament, who willingly constructs an alternate reality to justify his obsessive affair with her. As she happens to be the fiancee of his own son, the deception takes on particularly disturbing aspects. There is much more at work here than mere lust, or even mere love. No, it is sexual obsession that dominates this story, an obsession so pervasive that it propels the narrator to unspeakable lows. It propels the narrative toward its tragic conclusion. We experience this story through the detached eyes of a cold narrator, who engages in some logic-defying mental contortions to justify what he is doing. But there is no escaping the consequences of his disturbing romantic entanglement with Anna. He remains firmly rooted in the delusion that he has found true love, that he can have a domestic life with this young woman. He even assigns himself godlike powers of taking on others' negative feelings so that they can be free of them--all in the name of assuaging his own vague sense of guilt. At points, he even deflects blame from himself and onto the "devil." Damage is a 1992 Psychological Thriller film directed by Louis Malle, starring Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche, Miranda Richardson and Rupert Graves. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine praised Louis Malle's direction of the film and a "faithful film version" in regards to the original novel by Josephine Hart. Of the cast, Travers was most favourable towards Richardson's performance: "Richardson is extraordinary; it's a brave, award-caliber performance." [9]

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