Conversations With Other Women: Duality Made Separate
dv has already written an
official WOKJ review for this film, and copied it to her official review thread in the
Everyone's A Critic forum, but since there wasn't an average Joe thread, I thought I would post my comments here...
I really enjoyed this artsy, indie effort at capturing a strategic affair between two people who definitely know better. It helps immensely that the script is clearly written by someone both wise and cynical, not to mention the immense boost this film gets by casting two pros. Helena Bonham Carter has been around the track many times, and it shows in her performance in the most compellingly bitchy manner. Aaron Eckhart, newer to the scene, but proving to be a stalwart leading asshole, is equally at home in his role. The verbal sparring is as intense as a prize fight at times -- at others, it is as beguiling as a long forgotten nursery rhyme...
The split screen happens to really work for this film, though it hardly needs to be dwelled upon -- it's not like there's going to be a whole genre of two screen movies springing up out of this example. (To compare... consider 2000's
Timecode by the talented Mike Figgis -- that film featured
four split screens, each showing the same concurrent actions of the characters playing out in real time. A very good movie, and one that demands to be seen, but we hardly got a whole avalanche of split screen after that, though perhaps
CWOW is the first snowball rolling down the slope. One serious plus of
CWOW as a second split screen genre entry, is that the director wasn't afraid to do a little judicious fooling around with real time -- sparingly used, it was very effective.)
So in conclusion, yeah, I really admired and enjoyed this offbeat effort on the part of the director, Hans Canosa; the writer, Gabrielle Zevin; and the aforementioned rockin' cast. It was real and really good.
6 out of 5.
