With 2004’s “Before Sunset,” writer-director Richard Linklater revisited the endearing would-be lovers of 1995’s “Before Sunrise,” employing the same uniquely continuous two-person dialogue. But though the two films ostensibly share that style, the characters’ 10 added years of life experience allow the sequel an effortlessly higher pathos. The lovers are no longer in the midst of a flirty meet cute; a decade later, they bring their relationship’s convoluted history to the table.
Such onion layers of romantic past are similarly unpeeled in Hans Canosa’s “Conversations with Other Women,” every unstripped layer with its own teary sting. Although also using continuous dialogue, Canosa adds a curious split-screen effect to his two-person study, emphasizing the insurmountable separateness of the characters even as they attempt to relate.
In all honesty, they’re more calculating than relating – these characters are a lesson in marksmanship as well as failed love. Their dialogue not only lacks the candid sincerity of the “Before Sunsets,” but underplays such sentiment entirely. They’re sizing each other up, evaluating which old weak spots are still the most tender.
While the nameless man (Aaron Eckhart, “Thank You for Smoking”) and woman (Helena Bonham Carter, anything by Tim Burton) meet at a wedding, flirt one hell of a teasingly good game and progress quickly to her hotel room, it soon becomes clear that their meeting was not chanced, but hoped for, and their bond not new, but decades old. They skirt playfully around for a while around that fact, enjoying the freshness of their aged selves in the eyes of the person who knew-them-when, but the game is as depressing as it is momentarily invigorating. They have, after all, irrefutably gotten old.
And more tetchy with age. Flashback sequences depict a picturesque young couple, moony and bright – boring, in other words, and not nearly so engaging as the verbal jousting of their current selves. It doesn’t help that the characters’ younger counterparts are portrayed by actors with only the vaguest of resemblances to their standing adults. The flashbacks become a picture of idealized youth rather than illuminating character background, and distracting rather than helpful – an unneeded point of comparison for the depicted complexities of middle-aged love.
The man and woman make much of this supposed middle-age, raising eyebrows and shaking heads at the bewildering realization that they’ve suddenly reached their early 40s. Bonham Carter and Eckhart, of course, look quite good for the number, so their complaining seems pat, but they’ve a barbed way of regarding life anyway.
Bonham Carter is particularly acerbic. Eckhart’s winning charmer (a role for which his great white smile is especially well suited) plays life with a more genuine hand, lacking his potential sleaze as a serial ladies’ man even while dismissing his current girlfriend (10 years his junior). But sullenly smoking in the background of the wedding, Bonham Carter assumes a moody front of almost petulant cynicism.
Bitter as her pose might be, it’s a dishonest one, a careful sham specially designed for maximum emotional distance. “There’s something about you that sends me,” she begins, studying him in the bedroom. Then, springing back on guard, she’s quick to tack on a more cautious afterthought – “in the opposite direction.”
She’s lying. She’s drawn to this man, and happy with him; her cutting digs are a classic case of offensively minded defense. He, meanwhile, is the type of alpha male who would never accept them – from anyone but her. At one point pre-coital, she examines him from the bed and briskly, smirkingly, deems him fat. Eckhart recoils back into his shirt with a sudden shock of shame, then rebuffs her, grins and returns for more.
Even in their external interactions, the pair is only taking (affectionately) passive aggressive potshots at each other. There’s a humorous bit with a stressed wedding videographer attempting to tape 30 seconds of every guest wishing the bride and groom the best of luck. Bonham Carter tries multiple times to come up with something sincerely warm-hearted, but winds up again and again in sputtering tangents as to the ultimate failure of romance.
The film’s enigmatic title and Canosa’s continuous split-screen device has inevitably received critical accusations of gimmickry. Device though it is, the split-screen proves an effective way to bring stage-like immediacy to the big screen, keeping every body cue on camera and both performers on their very capable toes. The audience can observe their every shade and flicker, welcome to study them as any enticed lover might. The most distracting element of the dual screen is simply picking which performer to watch. When the final shot merges the two halves into a convincing whole, it’s a moment as relieving as it is poetic.
Conversations with Other Women
At the Michigan Theater
Fabrication
Rating: 3 and 1/2 out of 5 stars