Conversations With Other Women

Conversations With Other Women, starring Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart, was one that I initially watched solely because of Helena. Being a huge Helena fan, I admit that the first time I watched it I think I was focused primarily on her. It wasn’t until I re-watched it recently that I saw that the movie as a whole was put together quite well. Helena and Aaron are essentially the only actors/physical in the film and they play the unnamed ‘man’ and ‘woman’. They meet at a wedding reception that they were both attending and engage in seemingly harmless small talk, which turns to flirting as the couple soon recall that they were lovers in the past. They seem to rekindle their past love as the night goes on, and despite the fact that they were both seriously attached to other people, a one night stand seems to be in consideration.
The very first thing you’ll notice about this film when watching it is the split screen. For the majority of the movie, one side of the screen is always focused on the woman and the other is focused on the man…except when they’re showing a flashback, which they can conveniently play at the same time as the present day due to the split screen. I thought originally that the split screen would be distracting, annoying, and get old after awhile, but you get used to it fairly quickly and it does add a certain intimacy to the movie.
The whole movie felt really honest to me…it was a small independent film with a budget less then half a million and I felt like that tight-knit feeling carried on into the movie. All the emotions that went into what happened that night felt so real, so developed, and so upsetting …
I really loved how the movie ended…the way it was filmed and the actual content of the scene both satisfied me. I don’t like when you can predict many film’s endings by just assuming that it was going to work out for the characters…you can’t do that for this movie, and that’s what I like…it’s different.

7.0/10