The
wedding reception has nearly ended and most of the guests have left. The smooth
38-year-old bachelor (Aaron Eckhart),
having fortified himself with champagne, wanders over to the attractive
pink-gowned bridesmaid (Helena Bonham
Carter) seated at a back table. He attempts to interest her in him. Can we
guess where this will lead?
The
charm of Conversations with Other Women,
a quirky two-character drama that uses a split-screen visual device, is its insight
into human nature. The man and woman at the film's center - we never do learn
their names - are well aware of the pleasures and dangers of the voyage on
which they're about to embark. They know the rules of engagement, and they know
when to break them.
As
the film moves from the wedding reception hall to the elevator and then to her
hotel room, the split-screen device is used to show us the history of this
couple. And it turns out they have quite a history, going back fifteen to
twenty years. We see them as a young man (Erik
Eidem) and woman (Nora Zehetner)
and slowly, like pieces of a puzzle being turned over, we learn something of
their history, together and apart.
Through
Gabrielle Zevin’s well-crafted
script and director-editor Hans Canosa’s
split-screen device, we see separate images, closely aligned and sometimes overlapping,
the way two past, present or future lovers might see the world. Occasionally
one screen stays with the couple while the other screen looks in on their
significant others, her husband Jeffrey (Philip
Littell) or his girlfriend Sarah the Dancer (Serina Vincent), or on a shared experience that might be real or only
a fantasy about a missed opportunity.
A
film this well crafted risks being merely clever, and the energy does begin
to diminish in the final scenes. But what could be just a self-conscious acting
exercise is kept energized by Eckhart who shows us the vanity, fear and naiveté
underneath his calm exterior, and by Bonham Carter who shows us her maturity,
reality and boredom. While the characters are the same age, she observes: I feel like you're a little boy and I'm an
older woman.
Labels:
comedy, drama, romance, satire
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