Conversations with Other Women

Conversations with Other Women

Director: Hans Canosa

Writer: Gabirelle Zevin

84 Minutes

Two lovers who can’t be together.

We have seen this a hundred times before in every romantic film from Casablanca to Brokeback Mountain. When you have loved and lost and reunited with love, it always makes for an interesting story.

In Conversations with Other Women, they do it a little differently. They use a split screen between the two characters, interweaving dialog with past memories, and different actions each character could take.

In the end, there is love. But it’s lost love, love that cannot be had, and love that will never see the light of day.

They have one night in a hotel room.

In the scene above, Man (Aaron Eckhart) listens in on Woman’s (Helena Bonham Carter) phone conversation to her husband. Man also has a girlfriend, but she doesn’t seem much concern. Man listens in, trying to find moments of love in the conversation, but secretly searching for why their relationship failed.

He loves her. He admits it. He wants to make it work. He loved her in the past. He loves her today. He sees their future together, though it will never happen.

Her love has gone away. It’s the past. And though they have one night of romance, discussing where their lives had gone, and reliving memories of love, reality catches up and she knows their lives go in separate directions.

It’s a real movie, which could explain why so many of us haven’t seen it. The film’s theme discusses the fundamental truth of loving and losing and reuniting and ending.

This is the ending.

It could have been a second chance, but life has pasted them by. Perhaps both man and woman’s past relationship would have ended up in the same place their current relationships lye. Perhaps it would have worked out better. Perhaps worse.

But we’ll never know. These two have one night to let it out, explain their truths, and leave it on the table.

He loves her. She doesn’t love him. Or if she does love him, she settles for life without him.

When the morning comes, all they have is an empty seat in the back of a taxi and a plane to catch.

But there is a moment:

Man: Why did you come, really?
Woman: Do you want me to say I was hoping I'd see you?
Man: Yes and I want you to mean it.
Woman: You're so romantic...
Man: By romantic, you mean old fashioned?
Woman: No, by romantic, I mean romantic.

Like I said, two lovers who can’t be together. We’ve seen it a hundred times before, yet it's always going to make for an interesting story.

SKS