Last year, between the two of us, we watched an average of 317 movies.
This year our goal is to top that by watching at least one a day.
And as an extra special torture, we've decided to write about all of them.

14 February 2008

Conversations with Other Women, dir. Hans Canosa (2005)

NIKKI says:
This was a pleasant surprise. We had two movies ready and waiting for tonight, Hitman and the recent Day of the Dead remake. Both would have been good, crappy fun. But both scared us a bit, as good crappy fun the last few nights has turned into SHITTY HORRIBLE LAMENESS.

Instead, we decided to go with something potentially more romantic (being Valentine's Day and all), and the blurb for Conversations made it sound both romantic and a little bit supernatural.

Turns out, I'd misinterpreted the supernatural thing. It's not that the main characters have shared a past life or anything, they've simply shared time together, in their pasts. Makes much more sense now. As much as the film was romantic, too, it was also quite tragic. It revealed some great truths about people and the connections we make when we spend not just time together, but important developmental time together.

The couple here were together as young adults, were married, and spent a lot of time as the centre of each others' world, genuinely in love. Then it went bad, and they stopped seeing each other. Years later, and they are thrown together as part of a wedding ceremony. She's back in the country for one night, and he spends that night trying very hard to get her back. Even though he is seeing someone else, and she's married with kids to another man.

The film is basically one long conversation, and it works very well. It's tense at times, romantic at others. It's quite realistic, never overly sentimental. It was really great to watch a couple on screen that felt like a real couple, that said things you have said, felt things you have felt, without some kind of Hollywood sheen over the top of it all.

And, weirdly, Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart shared believable chemistry -- something I wouldn't have thought possible as she's usually so icy, and he's usually kinda cocky and manly. She really broke him down, and though she was aloof at times, she was never really bitchy. Their connection felt authentic.

I enjoyed this a lot.

3.5/5