In a 2001 interview on 60 Minutes II, an unapologetic David Greenglass dramatically revealed that he had lied, with the encouragement of the nefarious Roy Cohn, about his sister Ethel Rosenberg’s involvement in the selling of nuclear secrets to the Soviets. It was Greenglass’s testimony that helped send Ethel and her husband to the electric chair. These executions helped fuel Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunts, a crusade that serves as a backdrop to Marek Kanievska’s banal A Different Loyalty, the story of a man and wife forced to live apart from each other after he’s accused of collaborating with the K.G.B.
Loosely based on the true story of Eleanor Philby and her relationship to her husband, Kim Philby—one of the most successful double agents of the Cold War era—this aesthetically parched film doesn’t illuminate the paranoia of the era. It does, though, provides Sharon Stone, as Sally Cauffield, with a handy reel of countless Oscar clips, none better than the moment where she asks Leo (Rupert Everett) to choose between communism and her breasts.
From the crazy Arab who breaks into her Beirut apartment to the F.B.I. ogres who use an open window and Ethel Rosenberg as scare tactics, Stone’s ex-pat is subjected to one embarrassment after another throughout the film. She’s not a communist—all she wants to do is see her husband! But try telling that to the American ghouls who are everywhere in sight.
Considering the material’s non-stop hysteria, it’s anyone’s guess why Kanievska decides to play it all so straight. At one point a British dandy accuses Leo of being a closet case, but the laughs end there. Stone successfully tempers the material’s soapsuds, but her fine performance isn’t enough to save this dry-mouthed melodrama in serious need of a more Sirkian touch.
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