Enduring Love

Enduring Love (2004) is Roger Michell's psychological thriller, free to watch online on iFILM. Adapted from Ian McEwan's novel, it opens on a sunlit picnic that a falling hot-air balloon tears apart in seconds.

Trying to save a boy trapped in the basket, a stranger dies. University lecturer Joe (Daniel Craig) walks away physically fine but marked — and so does Jed (Rhys Ifans), another man who held the ropes that day. Jed decides their meeting meant something. He phones, he follows, he waits on the doorstep, certain that Joe loves him back. Joe's partner Claire (Samantha Morton) can only watch the man she knows come apart.

Michell builds dread out of obsession rather than violence — de Clérambault's syndrome, where fixation borrows the words of romance. Craig is a year away from Casino Royale here, and Ifans pitches Jed somewhere between pitiful and terrifying. A cold, claustrophobic watch for anyone who likes their thrillers working under the skin. Stream Enduring Love (2004) online on iFILM.