Neil Jordan's The End of the Affair has a hushed, spectral atmosphere more appropriate to a horror film than to a period British romance, but the mood is not unsuited to its source, Graham Greene's 1951 sin-and-redemption novel about an acidulous novelist and the wife of a meek civil servant with whom he has a soulful, crazy-making affair. The result is a bit like Brief Encounter meets Tales From the Crypt; the film has an impressive, and oppressive, weightiness. Ralph Fiennes, as the novelist, seems more animated than usual, maybe because, for a change, he's playing someone who doesn't look drip-dried. Venom becomes him. Julianne Moore, her skin alarmingly alabaster, works up a full repertoire of impassioned sidelong glances; as her poor-soul husband, who spends a fair amount of his time standing umbrellaless in the rain, Stephen Rea wilts impressively.

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