Conversations with Other Women DVD box set: with love

In "Conversations With Other Women" Bonham Carter plays an unnamed woman who has traveled from England to New York City to serve as a bridesmaid at a wedding where she knows precious few of the participants. Aaron Eckhart, playing a wedding guest, strikes up a conversation with her. Soon we realize these two are old flames with new lives: He now lives with a much younger dancer, she with a cardiologist many years her elder.

Woman and Man (that's how they're billed--yeeesh) gingerly explore the possibility of a sexual reconnection. Despite this suspense, "Conversations With Other Women" DVD box set plops along like a mediocre one-act play with a difference.

The two don't have much time; the woman's flight leaves at dawn. They repair to her hotel room where their bittersweet, often humorous verbal dance continues with a break for the inevitable catch-up sex. On the page, this all sounds corny. But, as remembrances layer one upon the other, this relationship takes on the darkness and depth of an epic love. Screenwriter Gabrielle Zavin freshens up stale love story conventions, and does so the right way: By creating distinct, well rounded characters. We piece together, bit by bit, the circumstances of the woman fleeing their troubled affair for safe harbor in London, and what perhaps followed in the years following their breakup. At times, Zavin's scenes can feel stagy and amateurish, forcing her characters from one beat to another as each seeks to fill the decade-plus gap since they were last together.

Conversations is actually interested in the joys and pains of human relationships. Each of these films is about sensitive, intelligent adults negotiating with that least selfish of human ideals: Eternal Love. That’s why I liked about Conversations with Other Women.