Movie Review: Conversations with Other Women

By Anne Brodie Aug 10, 2006, 5:15 GMT

Conversations with Other Women tells the compelling story of a couple whose reunion at a wedding reception ignites a mysterious attraction for each other that is deeper and more emotionally perilous than they are willing to admit.  At a New York City wedding reception, two guests, seemingly strangers, become entangled in a sexually-charged battle of wits.  But as the night carries on in a cigarette smoke haze, the nameless couple’s ...more

Helena Bonham Carter is the other woman talking here. She and a man she knew years ago meet at a New York wedding reception. They talk, flirt, test each other and seem to know which buttons to push. It dawns on us that they had been married. 

He wants to kick over the traces and appears to restrain himself, he desperately wants to reconnect with her the way he remembers and idealizes her. She stops him, saying she does not want to talk about other women, that is, the woman she was back then

Too much blood under the bridge. Life is different now. They’re middle aged now.

Bonham-Carter is the Woman, Aaron Eckhart is the Man, and they are in for a long night. They are never named.

The story unfolds in split screen, cameras focused on each of them. We see all possible variations of their interactions as the cameras, switch, trade shots and focus on the same moments. Its invasiveness lends a strange kind of intimacy. As moviegoers, we are voyeurs, but this makes it painfully clear.

The method seems to give us double information; it certainly gives the actors half the work!

The 2000 Mike Figgis film ‘Time Code’ used a four-split screen format. There were more characters and a variety of stories happening that were best served by the information- intense method.

Like Conversations, it requires some getting used to. Then it seemed a novelty. Now it seems less a novelty than a two character emotional dance.

It’s just them in two settings – a corner of the reception hall and in the hotel suite.

Split screen makes for a total picture. We come to know the Man and Woman and follow the emotion in its natural flow. With the exception of a couple of side players, there are no distractions.

The Woman has a new life in England; she’s married with children and is in town as a bridesmaid at a distant friend’s wedding. The friend is the Man’s sister, so we’re guessing the Woman knew he would be there, and hopes to see him.

He has a 22-year-old dancer girlfriend and seems completely embarrassed by it.

In flashback, we see him pining for his ex over the years, running up to women on the street who look like her. He has never recovered.

When he sees her at the wedding, he is delighted but unable at first to approach.

Later in the suite, they have half-hearted sex that’s mostly philosophical exchange. When their significant others call in, they realize their loved ones are not alone.

Complicated emotions play out in front of us, sometimes one character is in another room and unable to hear what the other is saying, maybe on purpose, maybe because we see more than we are normally allowed to thanks to the split screen.

We‘re also allowed inside the characters’’ imagination, seeing how their lives would have been different if they had not met again that night, and the poor light in which the view each other’s lives.

It is an extremely interesting 86 minutes, thanks to the format and the gifted leads.

Eckhart is more appealing than usual, relishing vulnerability, wearing his heart on his sleeve. His deeply etched sarcasm is the result of continued disappointment and emptiness over the years.

Bonham-Carter has so completely lost the period piece persona that launched her considerable career. If she wants to play nitty gritty naturalistic real life, she has ample opportunity here.

However, there is a strong sense of disheartened bitterness about the film. Maybe it reflects real life too well, and the impossibility of wrapping up with a terrific close that answers the questions.

I found myself rooting for the cuckolded husband back home

Opens August 11th.  MPAA: Rated R for language and sexual content.