Conversations with Other Women

Conversations with Other Women is a 2005 romantic drama film directed by Hans Canosa, written by Gabrielle Zevin, starring Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter. The film won Best Actress for Bonham Carter at the 2005 Tokyo International Film Festival. Plot At a wedding reception in New York, a man in his late thirties (Eckhart) approaches a bridesmaid (Bonham Carter) of about the same age, and offers her a glass of champagne. As conversation ensues, they begin to flirt. Witty small talk about such topics as the wedding party and their own past relationships gradually reveals to the viewing film audience that they are not strangers, but in fact were previously husband and wife. A series of flashback scenes shows much younger versions of the two of them together at the start of their relationship. Despite both having significant others (22-year-old Sarah the dancer and Geoffrey the cardiologist, respectively, both absent), the couple go upstairs to her hotel room together. However, their decision to sleep together is one which is clearly complex and fraught with emotional baggage for each of them. Again with flashbacks, a series of vignettes juxtaposes their earlier selves against the older, perhaps wiser, couple in the hotel room. The two reminisce and reassess their feelings for each other. He appears to have ambiguous feelings about the direction of his life, while she seems more adjusted to her life choices. The emotional fulfillment the two experienced in their youth has the appearance of causing them to reflect on their current lives in comparison to the choices and options they had while much younger.