Conversations With Other Women, 2006
Conversations With Other Women, 2006
Directed by Hans Canosa
Written by Gabrielle Zevin
Cast:
Aaron Eckhart ... Man
Helena Bonham Carter ... Woman
Yury Tsykun ... Bartender at Wedding
Brian Geraghty ... Groom
Brianna Brown ... Bride
Thomas Lennon ... Videographer
Philip Littell ... Jeffrey the Cardiologist
Woman bails out of wedding party, smoking at a table. Man sees her and sits next to her, smiling. Man and Woman strike up conversation with ease, as if they have known people like each other from past lives.
Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter are the Man and the Woman in this Conversations With Other Women, a 2006 sleeper, and in their conversation, they strike up an interesting and engaging chemistry. This movie doesn't have the most in the way of plot, but when the double-frame filming is coupled with the title and the truths that come to light later in the film, Conversations With Other Women proves to be a good, strong movie with tinges of foreign-film-ness and hues of character study about it.
Carter's character is a 40-something woman with a bit of a chip on her shoulder, and Eckhart's character is a 40-something man who's a little too jolly about the current state of his life. The two talk in metaphors, pregnant with subtext, about the age of his lover (22), the quality of her new husband (decent). They flirt, volleying questions and assumptions with the ease of world-weary adults who know what will inevitably happen once they leave the ballroom and who aren't afraid of it. Through their conversation, we learn just how much these two people know about each other -- what they want to know and what they'd rather forget.
This is a one-of-a-kind film -- the way it was shot, the subject of the conversation, the characters, the actors and their chemistry. All these parts come together with the beauty of an orchestral movement. I really like the double-frame film technique: it allows the audience to see these characters as whole, separate entities of themselves. They are both complete people with complete brains, emotional worlds, and histories of their own, regardless of whether the other is present or not, which is a nice change from the typical boy-as-subject, boy-meets-girl, boy-woos-girl, boy-beds-girl scenario. My only complaint about the film is the way it ends, though it is a realistic and inevitable ending.
I recommend this movie for a weeknight when there's nothing on TV and it's too hot/cold to go outside, or a Saturday afternoon when there's nothing to read. Not that it's a bad movie or doesn't deserve the viewing time; it's that it's a laidback, reflective film, not a peppy, energizing flick. It deserves a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and a couch to curl up on.
Overall: B+