Conversations with Other Women

From the moment I saw the trailer for CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN I wanted to see this film. The combination of Helena Bonham Carter and the terrific Aaron Eckhart together on the screen with dialog that is out of this world, both funny and sad, at the same time, makes this film an intelligent and smart artistic piece of work. And the split screen makes it even more interesting as you get to watch the actors pull off such marvelous performances. I want to see this film again just to see what I might have missed.

When the film begins at a wedding and continues with the momentum of the attraction a couple feel for one another, it is impossible not to think of your own wedding experiences and perhaps the magic of meeting "the right one" as time ticks away in your life. New York is the perfect location for this film and as the last frame of the film appears before the credits roll, you simply don't want to have this couple leave. CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN makes you really think about what is important in your personal life and when you finally meet that "special person", hold on to him, or her, for the rest of your life. Bravo, Hans Canosa for this brilliant film.

The film stats as a casual meeting of a man (Aaron Eckhart) and a woman (Helen Bonham Carter) on the wedding banquet in a New York City Hotel. They seem to know each other and used to be close once. Now she is married to a doctor, the cardiologist, and lives in London. He has a steady girlfriend, a "23 on August 12" Broadway Show Dancer. They seem to like each other and flirt innocently while drinking champagne, smoking (she is) and dancing. But gradually, apparently forgotten or hidden very deep inside feelings come back to life so intensely that they might (or not) change a man's and a woman's lives again.

This is my kind of film, with only two main characters, with the subtle interaction between them, when we have to rely more on their body languages, their eyes, their facial expressions than to the words that they say to each other. "Conversations with Other Women" is a riveting, bittersweet, honest, and realistic movie about making choices, losses, and regrets. Two people used to be the one world which had split years ago leaving them not just on the different continents but on the different halves of the screen. The film brings to mind Before Sunrise of course but its atmosphere is more sober and melancholic. It is not about possibility of future together, it is all about past. Both actors are excellent. The split screen technique works perfectly for the whole duration of the film. It is a very well made and creative indie picture which I enjoyed watching.

There are so many conventional movies about adulterous chance meetings that the prospects of another one wouldn't seem to be too promising. However, director Hans Canosa takes a rather novel approach with this small-scale 2006 indie film in looking at the illicit one-night stand with a pervasive split-screen process. Most often, the two sides reflect the perspectives from the man and woman at the center of the story, and at other times, we see their individual memories as flashbacks to their youthful courtship. Initially, the gimmicky aspect of watching the duality of the action is rather jarring, but it gradually becomes a dramatically effective means for exhibiting the dynamics of the two characters in real time. Gabrielle Zevin's sharply delineated, often amusing dialogue also helps to bring an immediacy to what could have been a predictably drawn situation.

The intimate, verbose plot itself turns on several contrivances, some more forgivable than others (like the absence of names for the lovers and the misunderstanding arising from matching cell phones). Regardless, it's really the adroit charm and emotional dexterity of the actors that sets this movie apart. Playing yet another rascally man-child, Aaron Eckhart adds shades of mid-life romantic vulnerability that make his character likeably flawed. But the picture really belongs to Helena Bonham Carter's richly textured performance as the woman, easily her best work since 1997's "The Wings of the Dove". As a complacent married woman who feels herself hurtling palpably toward forty, she provides such revealing nuance with each scene that I ended up wondering more about her character's fate than his. With her sad dark eyes and pouty mouth, she looks more like legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau as the years pass.

Shot in only thirteen days and with a running time of only 84 minutes, the movie is quite small in scope, but it is also a relatively undiscovered gem that will hopefully take on new life on DVD. Speaking of which, the 2007 DVD has a surprisingly robust number of extras beginning with Canosa's thoughtful commentary track. Also included are an entertaining 25-minute interview with an easily bantering Eckhart and Carter from the Telluride Film Festival; an insightful five-minute short with the director showing a demo of his dual-camera film-making technique; a helpful four-minute explanation of why split-screen was used specifically for the film; and a less interesting, more technical twenty-minute demonstration of how Canosa used Apple Final Cut Pro software to make his complex edits.

This film is a bit different than most because is filmed for dual screen, meaning that during every scene there are 2 cameras capturing the action. Usually we are shown the same event from different angles, other times the 2 sides are splits in time, so we see the past and present. The main characters, played brilliantly by Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart, meet as participants in a wedding and rediscover their past. The dialog is brilliantly written and the acting superb. In the question and answer session after the screening, Ms. Carter was asked if the split screen made acting more difficult. She replied that unlike the shooting of a "normal" movie where they would have to shoot each person's part separately then take a break and move the camera and do the other person, with both camera's running at the same time, the whole scene could be shot nearly continuously allowing for a more realistic conversation situation. This made things much easier, but she did admit she missed having any "down time" since she was always in front of one of the cameras.

This movie's character development runs more like a play than a film and contains really excellent performances by Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart. I was initially worried the split-screen effect would be distracting and irritating, however, not so! Splitting the screen allows the viewer to watch each actors performance in more depth, see bits and pieces from the past, as well as what the characters each might be imagining. I'll avoid spoiling any plot details, but will say the performances really do justice to the complexities of romantic relationships. Highly recommended for lovers of character exploration and exploring life's complexities.