As the screenwriter of such landmark Martin Scorsese films as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation Of Christ, and Bringing Out The Dead, Paul Schrader has left an indelible mark on American film. As a director, however, he's struggled to find a niche, ricocheting from genre to genre with results that are sometimes impressive (Light Sleeper, Affliction) but often forgettable (Witch Hunt, Cat People, Touch). Forever Mine, a 1999 film that premiered on cable due in part to difficulties with its production company, falls into the latter category. Initially set in early-'70s Miami, it follows a doomed love triangle involving a lusty 23-year-old cabana boy (Joseph Fiennes), a boozy housewife (Gretchen Mol), and her corrupt, temperamental politician husband (Ray Liotta). Spurred by lustful, illicit glances, mutual attractiveness, and sweeping musical cues, Fiennes and Mol enjoy a few precious, nudity-laden moments of extramarital bliss, but when the lovestruck Fiennes follows Mol home to New York, Liotta decides that he must be eliminated. Alas, Liotta's henchmen do a less-than-stellar job of killing Fiennes, and 14 years later, he pays Liotta and Mol a visit, disfigured but wealthy and powerful after assuming the identity of a Latino drug lord. Forever Mine's plot recalls the sweeping melodramatics of Douglas Sirk, John Woo, and Pedro Almodóvar, but Schrader handles it with a dour seriousness befitting his filmmaking hero, Robert Bresson. As writer and director, Schrader deserves most of the blame for Forever Mine's overheated silliness, but poor casting choices also play a major role. The film's airport-bookshop-ready plot relies heavily on the notion that Fiennes is so obsessed with Mol that he'd do anything to be with her, but her adulterous trophy wife makes for much too facile a glamour girl to inspire such soul-shaking passion. While Mol simply seems out of place, Fiennes appears intent on enshrinement in the Miscasting Hall Of Fame with his supremely unconvincing turn as both a hot-to-trot young stud and a Machiavellian, disfigured, heavily accented, middle-aged schemer. Only Liotta emerges unscathed, in part because his is the only character whose actions and motivation seem rooted in the plausible rather than in some misbegotten paperback romance. Forever Mine explores many of Schrader's pet themes—obsession, revenge, jealousy, betrayal, guilt—but they've seldom felt as empty, shallow, or ridiculous.