NEW YORK Strange. In most movie love stories, the turning point takes place in a scene between the lovers. In "Love Affair," which is about how characters played by Warren Beatty and Annette Bening fall in love, it takes place in a scene between Bening and Katharine Hepburn.

Beatty is nowhere in sight. He and Bening have landed on Tahiti, for reasons too complicated to explain, after having fallen in love at first sight on an airplane. It happens that Beatty has an elderly aunt who live...