CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN: DVD

SYNOPSIS:
A man (Aaron Eckhart) and a woman (Helena Bonham Carter) meet at a wedding in a hotel ballroom. They begin a conversation and it becomes clear they have much in common, with hints that they have met before. But there are ghosts of other people in their conversation: he lives with a dancer 15 years his junior and she is married and living in London.

Review by Louise Keller:
What makes this intriguing two-hander so appealing are the charismatic performances by Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter. The entire film from first time director Hans Canosa is like one single breath. We meet the couple as they themselves meet, surrounded by the formality of a wedding. Superficial chat becomes flirtation, and we slowly get clues about their lives. Engrossing from start to finish, Conversations with Other Women is a stimulating man/woman tussle about life, love and the whole damn thing. It's funny, unexpected, philosophical and romantic with a dash of melancholy thrown in for good measure.

'If old times were great, we wouldn't let them get old,' says Bonham Carter's character. She is wearing a pink strapless bridesmaid dress, but explains she was simply a last minute replacement. He reveals he has a much younger (dancer) girlfriend; she admits to being married to an (older) cardiologist in London. They joust with words and emotions and Canosa uses flashbacks in which a young man and woman meet and fall in love to interrupt their conversation. It is the way we are able to merge the two couples that makes this film exciting. Split screens displaying the present and the past also features as the man and woman progress from the hotel function room to her 11th floor hotel room bed. Their relationship is playful, cheeky and sexy. 'I'm done with extraordinary,' she says when he tells her he expected the man she married to be extraordinary.

Eckhart and Bonham Carter make us curious and we care about everything. It doesn't matter who they're talking about, they are really talking about themselves. There is the promise of consequences and guilt. 'There are no happy endings in our future,' she says. There's plenty of drama in Conversations with Other Women, but like Julie Delpy's Before Sunrise, most of the drama is off screen and relived through the two characters. Immensely enjoyable, this is a romantic interlude you will not want to miss

Published April 10, 2008