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`EVERY NIGHT I cut my heart out, but in the morning it's always full." So says Ralph Fiennes in the magnificent screen version of Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient."
This visual and emotional stunner was world-premiered on Tuesday evening and left the packed audience at the Ziegfeld Theater limp, moist-eyed and raving about the artistry of all the actors (Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Kristin Scott Thomas, Willem Dafoe, Naveen Andrews) . . . the superb direction and screenplay adaptation of Anthony Minghella and the great good fortune of Miramax, which has snared another winner. There hasn't been such eye-dabbing or so many wet, bunched-up tissues at the end of a movie in years! And the film is long, a real epic, but nobody appeared restless.
At the post-screening party at Remi (the entire night benefited AmFAR), Binoche, Thomas, Dafoe, Andrews and author Ondaatje were mobbed. As for Fiennes - unable to get away from his current shooting schedule in Australia - he has never been more intense onscreen; his love scenes with Kristin Scott Thomas are miracles of nonexploitive, realistic eroticism.
Nobody connected with the film could take more than one sip of wine or one tiny bite of food before being pawed, pushed and prodded by the press - but only in the nicest, most laudatory manner. Even NYC's...