Plot summary

Novelist Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) is writing "This is a diary of hate" as he starts a new book as well as the film's narration.It's 1946 when Bendrix has a chance meeting one rainy night in London with Henry Miles (Stephen Rea), husband of his former mistress Sarah (Julianne Moore). Two years before, she had abruptly ended their affair for reasons revealed later. Henry suspects Sarah is currently having an affair and is considering employing a private eye to investigate. Bendrix was jealous of Henry during his affair with Sarah and had tried to persuade her to leave him. If she has since started an affair with someone new after telling him there would never be anyone else, Bendrix wants to find out. Without telling Henry, he hires the investigator himself, at the same time as making arrangements to meet Sarah.Consistent with the tone of his diary, their meeting is cold and promises no future. Events are shown from Bendrix perspective, with contrasting flashbacks of Bendrix with Sarah as they began their affair during World War II. The present day action continues as Bendrix encounters the private investigator Parkis (Ian Hart), who uses his young son Lancelot (Sam Bould) to help him snoop. The boy has a birthmark that disfigures his face.Parkis reports that he has found who Sarah has been seeing under the pretence of attending dental appointments. Bendrix jealousy leads him to confront the man named Smythe, using Lancelot as a ploy to gain access to his home. Smythe (Jason Isaacs) is a priest who admits he knows Sarah and who Bendrix is. Smythe is affronted by the way he has approached him and tells him to leave.The climax of Act 2 is a night of passion during the war when we witness them making love amid the sound of V2 rockets falling and shaking the house. Bendrix gets out of bed to check on his landlady and is blown down the stairs by the blast from a rocket hitting the house. When he recovers consciousness, he goes back upstairs to find Sarah praying. Seeing him, she is shocked that he is alive. Bendrix detects that her attitude has changed and accuses Sarah of being disappointed that he survived. She leaves telling him "Love doesn't end, just because we don't see each other."Back to 1946 and Parkis inveigles his way into a social function at the Miles house and steals Sarah's diary which he gives to Bendrix. As he sits to read it, the film sequences of the main events in their relationship are reshown but the narrative is from Sarah's perspective. After Bendrix is hurt by the bomb, Sarah runs downstairs and finds him motionless with no pulse. Assuming him dead, she runs back upstairs and begins to pray for a miracle. Just as she makes a promise to God that she will stop seeing Bendrix if he is brought back to life, Bendrix comes into the room.Now knowing why Sarah ended the affair, Bendrix follows Sarah and begs her to reconsider. Sarah tells Bendrix that she has felt dead without him and can no longer keep her "promise" to God. They rekindle the affair. Bendrix tries to persuade Sarah to leave Henry and confesses to Henry that he hired Parkis to find out who she was seeing while making fake visits to the dentist. Henry is furious and burns the evidence Bendrix produces about Smythe. Henry also desperately asks Sarah not to leave him.Bendrix is visited one night by Henry as he and Sarah are in bed. He does not open the door. She agrees to go away with him the following morning to Brighton where Bendrix finds Parkis is following him. To increase the likelihood of divorce, Bendrix contrives to kiss Sarah in view of their hotel bedroom window where Parkis can photograph them.Bendrix believes his goal has been realised when Henry appears in Brighton. But Henry's reason is not to confront the adulterous couple. It is to tell them what he had come to Bendrix' house for the night previously, that Sarah has a terminal illness and will not survive much longer than the duration of a divorce.Bendrix stays with Henry and Sarah during her final days. Bendrix does not permit Smythe entry when he tries to visit Sarah, telling her it was just a person, and not the postman. When she dies, Smythe visits to offer spiritual support but evokes anger from Bendrix who blames God for taking her. It becomes clear the object of hate in his book is not Sarah or Henry but God. "I hated You as though You existed. Now I am tired of hating...but You're still there".At Sarah's funeral, Parkis tells Bendrix that after finding his son Lancelot asleep in a doorway while he was supposed to be recording her visits to Smythe, she had kissed his birthmarked cheek as she put him on a train home. When the birthmark disappeared, Lancelot believed she had worked a healing miracle on him.At Henry and Sarah's house, Bendrix continues to talk to God whose existence and virtue he had earlier doubted, completing his book with the lines.. "I've only one prayer left. Dear God, forget about me. Look after her and Henry".