User Reviews

Friday May 26, 7:00pm The Neptune

Friday June 2, 9:30pm Lincoln Square

"My heart was broken." "So you married a cardiologist."

A man (Aaron Eckhart) and a woman (Helena Bonham Carter) meet on the fringe of a wedding reception and engage in a sexy verbal joust. The tone of the conversation slowly reveals the two were lovers whose marriage ended many years earlier. As they talk, their fondness for each other along with abundant emotional baggage is apparent. What makes Conversations with Other Women unique is the use of split-screen images throughout the entire film. This editing gimmick, which at first seems simply an annoying distraction, ultimately helps drive the story with the clever use of every conceivable subject and camera angle combination. The two characters and two images are thrown together and pulled apart in a simultaneous exchange that is both confusing and attractive. On their own, neither subject nor technique would succeed so handily, but the visual and verbal combination in Conversations with Other Women is an interesting match.

This is a rich mix of things, some successes and some interesting possible failures.

It is surely interesting enough to recommend. Independently, it is emotionally affecting, and works on that score as well.

Be aware that there is a spoiler coming.

The thing that works is the writing. It is amazing. Often a writer faces the challenge of being invisible. There are advantages to this, because the more you add the eye of someone not actually in the story, the less power the dynamics of the story have. This impossible invisibility carries over to the problem of explanatory speaking. When you have a character saying something purely because you as a viewer need to know it, you blow a hole in your boat.

The writing here takes that problem and turns it against itself. Usually I would remark that it is a narrative fold placed deep in the narrative. But my regular crew knows that -- it is why this was recommended.

There are only two actors. They are unnamed, and credited as "man" and "woman." In a profound display of ignorance, the included DVD interviews with these two actors includes a question about why their characters were unnamed. Both said it was because the story was universal, and so on. But the viewer will see that these two people are actually many souls and many fabricated or desired versions of some of those souls. Each of these souls exists because they are part of a story being told to themselves or the other actor.

The writing has us completely out of the noir loop, at least the ordinary one. We are given no background and have to figure things out over time. As the movie develops, we are teased into a single narrative. By the end, we believe we know what we are supposed to: a man meets his ex-wife at the wedding of his sister. They are still attracted to each other and cannot purge that even though they have moved to others. They work at living with this, she as confirming her separation by testing it; he by reinforcing his knots of self-doubt. But they do so by reference to other selves, both past selves from the courtship and marriage and parallel selves they maintain. Check out the rather brilliant title.

(There was a child involved.)

Against this spine: discovering what the story "is," the writer has created playful dialog that skips around, maintaining multiple perspectives, truths. selves. It is wonderful, and the look of the two actors (especially knowing Helena's background in such films) is wonderful.

Another attraction is that the film is mostly a splitscreen experiment. The filmmaker obviously selected the technique -- one would think by watching it -- to register that at any given moment, the speaker is at least two individuals. Sometimes in fact, this is how the screen is used. At other times, it simply follows the two actors in "real" time. Other effects are added to the vocabulary.

So the idea of the experiment, and that it was shot quickly and edited on a MacBook, has appeal. But the split-screen needed some more care than it got here, and watching this more than once it becomes clear that the reach of the filmmaker was less than his intuition. I applaud the attempt, but the cinema is something of a mess.

The actors are earnest and Carter has that confused look as if there are many souls within confusing her. But they don't master the words at all. They simply deliver them in the by now standard established by Mamet. The rhythm is good, but the actual meaning is lost because they don't know what they are saying. The actors are as confused as the characters.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

(Watched in Toronto)

Anyone who has seen Before Sunrise/Before Sunset will unquestionably recognize the similarity between Before Sunset and Conversation, in both the situation and the delivery (in essence a continuous conversation through the entire movie).

But then, Conversation has a unique feature, the split screen, which is not a novelty, but taken to an unbelievable extent. In fact, the entire movie is on split screen. Sometimes even when the characters appear in the same scene in a simple conversation, they are shown separately on the left and right screens, so that there is no conclusive evidence that they are REALLY talking to each other. But the infinite variation of ways in which the split screen is used is mind-boggling. If I try to describe all these different ways the movie is presented on the split screen, I would exceed the IMDb 1,000 word limit many times. But the important thing is that this is not hollow, flashy show off. While you applaud the imaginative and creative style, we also notice that these things are done at specific situations for specific effects and purposes, and do add a great deal to the movie.

But regardless of how innovative and clever are the techniques, it is ultimately the human story that captivates the audience. Here, we have a young couple meeting, falling in love, coming together, and then parted. But all these are in flashbacks, and we don't even know their names. We see their re-encountering years later, during a wedding party, when she has been married to a cardiologist, and he living with a girlfriend who is a dancer.

Here again, comparison to Before Sunset is inevitable. The biggest difference is of course that Jesse and Celine never had the good fortune of being together at all. The similarity though is in the continuous conversation after the re-encounter. The man and the woman in Conversation, however, ironically, engage in considerably more than just conversation. As to the conversation itself, it is not as elegant and compelling as Before Sunset. And yet, it moves in its own bitter-sweet earnestness.

Much of the charm of Conversation is absolutely to the credit of the leads. Aaron Eckhart, who was quite impressive in Possession, plays the hard-to-read man, who eventually does have some affecting moments towards the end. Helena Bonham Carter, probably the only actress alive who can match Cate Blanchett in versatility (do you recall Cate ever portraying an ape?), delivers in a pitch-perfect performance the intelligent but slightly neurotic, vulnerable woman. The young actors who play the role of the couple in their youth, Erik Eiden and Nora Zehetner, are healthily fresh-looking and immensely likable.

This is a sadder movie (but not without its funny moments) compared with Before Sunset, but those who have enjoyed Before Sunset should have no problem liking Conversation.

this isn't one for the action junkie or the easily bored but its a genial, subtle, enjoyable yarn about two people who meet at a wedding and as always happens on these occasions, hook up. Well thats how it appears at the start with the innocent flirting. Eventually you find out the "history" the couple have together and I'm still not clear if they actually were married briefly or not. I saw this on TV so didn't get the whole split-screen effect which people got if they saw the movie so this review may be different from others but there were split-screen flashbacks from when the couple were together 15/20 years ago before and with some good editing, it added an innovative touch to the movie. This had a well written script and kept the audience guessing as to the true nature of the relationship, whether they would actually sleep together in the hotel room and whether Helena Bonham Carter would postpone her trip home. Without sounding too shallow, i think Mrs Tim Burton is about as sexy as a sack of potatoes so having Eckhart fawn all over her like she was gods gift was unconvincing but beauty in eye of beholder and all that. But if you like relationship movies and enjoyed before sunset/sunrise see this.

After thinking about why this movie did not get me, I decided that although the concept and much of the dialogue was right on, the two actors lacked poignancy. The flashbacks to their young encounter were touching and vivid. But their second encounter was repartee. The two could not persuade me of any vital concern between them.

At bottom are issues between the two that promise interest. The woman has a second marriage she values, but remembers the passion of her first marriage which she would like in her life today. Unfortunately, her first husband has not achieved self understanding in the elapsed years, making their new encounter a disappointment.

On the other hand, her first husband who thought initially this second encounter would be an interesting one nighter, does come to realize that he lost something of great value when his philandering split them. He is left at the end with the quandary that while he should reform, he is very unsure that he can do it. "Being happy is so difficult" he summarizes.

It is just too bad that these two excellent actors lacked a director that could lead them to a vibrant portrayal. So the viewer is left with a sparkling analysis of a conundrum, but a disappointing portrayal.