Nights in RodantheNights in Rodanthe is a grown-up love story. In most silver-screen romances, the credits begin to roll at the point when the two lovers finally connect. A happy ending is implied, but people who have lived a bit know that happiness can be fleeting. Nights in Rodanthe starts at a point where the credits have already rolled and the house lights have gone up on youthful romance.
The central characters, Paul and Adrienne, played by Gere and Lane, have each sacrificed or suppressed parts of themselves. Paul has pursued being the best doctor he can at the expense of his wife and son, while Adrienne let go of her vocation as an artist to be a wife and mother. Both have arrived at an impasse in their lives; Paul's last patient died on the operating table and Adrienne's cheating husband wants to come home, while her teenage daughter has decided she hates her.
Having dispensed with youthful idealism, the stage is set for love to hold up a mirror that allows both characters to learn about themselves and move forward with act two of their lives. As Wolfe puts it, "I think you get involved with people because there are pieces of yourself that you can't learn otherwise."
"It's a love story for adults," says Gere. "These are people who had lives before they met and aren't looking for a relationship to define them."
The setting for the story is a fabulous clapboard inn perched on stilts above a beach on an island in North Carolina that is regularly pounded by hurricanes. Adrienne is taking care of the inn for a few days while her best friend takes a break, and Paul is there to meet the widower of the woman who died on his operating table.
Wolfe gave nature a prominent role: "Nature conspires to bring these two people together, despite their wilfulness, their fear and their guardedness. There's a lyric in the song that's playing when they're dancing on the pier: 'just when I made plans for living alone.' I love that line because I think you do unconsciously fortify yourself against hurt."
Gere takes the dramatic metaphor a step further: "The storm is external, but it's also internal, isn't it? There are certainly internal storms that happen all the time to us. But I do think we kind of create dramas in our lives: we're the stories. There's a great Jewish saying that says God created men and women because he loved stories. We're writing that story as we're living it."
For Paul, divorced from his wife and estranged from his son, and Adrienne, under siege from her erring husband and volatile teenager, love is simply not on the menu. It takes a hurricane to make them drop their defences. As Wolfe puts it: "All of a sudden nature is an active participant in these people's lives. As a result...it makes them vulnerable and more present.
"You make very brave decisions when you are young because you really don't believe that you are going to crash. The older you get, the more you are aware of the consequences of your choices. If there's family involved and responsibilities, you're not just meeting a person, you're meeting that person's lifestyle. It requires a kind of stupid bravery to do it, to start again."
Paul and Adrienne's affair, born in a storm, continues in the peace of the days that follow. For Lane, the role of romantic love in life is clear: "Love should be inspiring to make you a better person, end of story – and beginning of story. That continues, whether you're in daily contact with somebody or not."
Gere seems to revel more in the movie's attitude towards parental love. "I don't think in men-women things we tend to rejoice in the wisdom of love. There was a wonderful quote from Bob Dylan - I think someone was asking a question about the relationship he had with Joan Baez - where he said 'you know it's really hard to be wise and in love at the same time,' which is very true. But I think there is a selflessness in being a parent, which I've come to appreciate."
For Wolfe, the fascination of a love story is "the same thing that fascinates me about romance in real life; it's two incredibly impossible people coming together with all their guards and all their weapons and all their damages, connecting. The wonder, difficulty, power and foolishness of that, I find really fascinating."
Summing up the film Wolfe said: "I think the movie ultimately is much more about loss than about love. It's more about the transformational power of loss. How loss redefines you and makes you anew.
"At certain times in your life, you find yourself confronting loss. Loss often feels like something cruel and awful. But if you can pass through it, you can come out on the other side knowing things about yourself and having a greater sense of your strength as a result."
Lane added: "I remember when my grandmother was about to pass away. My mother called me and we hadn't spoken for a couple of years, so I know about the relationship in the movie, where James Franco and Richard haven't spoken for, I guess, a year.
"When death comes, your priorities change pretty quickly and forgiveness is truly a transformational part of love that I take from the lesson of loss."
Gere, however, sees it differently. "I don't think this is a tragic story in the operatic sense; I think that Unfaithful (an earlier film starring Gere and Lane) was. That had all the elements of operatic tragedy. I think (Nights in Rodanthe) is transformational, in the cleanest possible sense. Everyone in this is, in some sense, a survivor."
Nights in Rodanthe will be released Friday, October 10, 2008