Bonham Carter has flown in form London as a last minute replacement bridesmaid for an old friend and is bored by the wedding until she encounters Aaron Eckhart whom we soon learn is the bride's brother. It would be difficult to imagine two finer actors than Helen Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart to pull off this story. We are able to not only see ell sides of the characters physically, but we are also allowed to step into the 'private space' created by each of the characters, a space that grows in meaning as the film proceeds. Hans Canosa makes a strong debut with Gabrielle Zevin's intelligent screenplay (read two character dialogue) CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN and while some viewers may be distressed about his choice of use of the split screen presentation, Canosa's decision to be the editor of the film makes a strong argument for his artistic decision. 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. Speaking of which, the 2007 DVD has a surprisingly robust number of extras beginning with Canosa's thoughtful commentary track. 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. With her sad dark eyes and pouty mouth, she looks more like legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau as the years pass. 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. 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". Playing yet another rascally man-child, Aaron Eckhart adds shades of mid-life romantic vulnerability that make his character likeably flawed. ![]() Regardless, it's really the adroit charm and emotional dexterity of the actors that sets this movie apart. 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). Gabrielle Zevin's sharply delineated, often amusing dialogue also helps to bring an immediacy to what could have been a predictably drawn situation. 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. ![]() 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. 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. There are so many conventional movies about adulterous chance meetings that the prospects of another one wouldn't seem to be too promising.
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