Adultery is a wry comedy/drama that, thanks to good acting by all hands and an unusually fine script (credited to Neil Wexter) plays like a dizzying, demented soap opera. Mike Horner plays a hack writer obsessed with sex, hookers and his wife's potential infidelities. His wife, played by the sublime Nina Hartley, goes off on an extended business trip, leaving him in a hallucinatory frenzy of lust and suspicion. His sexy psychoanalyst (Siobhan Hunter) can do nothing but offer her body as grist for his feverish fantasy mill. Much of the action takes place on the imagination place of Horner's sex reveries, which lends the whole story a refreshingly surreal intensity.

The only factor that prevents Adultery from being a total smash is its single, but significant, technical problem. The nearly ever-present background music is anything but; it's mixed so far forward in the audio package, it almost drowns out great chunks of the witty and intelligent dialog. You'll have to strain to hear many lines, but it'll be worth the effort.

The sex is every bit as good as the acting, with a superb, deeply passionate lesbian scene between Hartley and Alexandra Greco that actually packs emotional, as well as erotic, impact, So don't worry about the lousy sound. Adultery is one video feature that won't cheat on you.