(2006) At a wedding, a man (Aaron Eckhart) brings a glass of champagne to a woman (Helena Bonham Carter), smoking a cigarette and wearing a pink bridesmaid's dress, who says to him in a British accent that she doesn't drink. "You smoke but you don't drink," he says flirtatiously.

Spilled milk and broken crockery - people in love can make each other miserable - attempt a reversal of entropy in director Hans Canosa's romantic dramedy, which employs a split screen (in which some things depicted are only imagined to have happened) throughout this cunningly clever original screenplay by Gabrielle Zevin.

"I do remember you from before": she'd said the same thing to him about smoking and not drinking nineteen years earlier, sitting under a tree in the summer, when they were both 19 (played by Erik Eidem and Nora Zehetner). She says that for the past nine years she's lived in London, married to a cardiologist named Jeffrey, following her divorce from a lawyer; Susie, the bride, had invited her at the last minute to New York City to substitute for the seventh bridesmaid, who'd had a freak accident. He says the bride is his sister, and the groom Dan is an attorney in his firm; he's in a relationship with a Broadway dancer, Sarah, who will be 23 on August the 12th.

The man and the woman dance apart from the wedding party and speak a testimonial for the guy videotaping the ceremony. Afterward they go up to the eleventh floor in an elevator together, awkwardly accompanied by one of the young bridesmaids, who asks the man about his girlfriend Sarah. As they proceed to her room, the woman mentions the possibility of consequences; the man replies: "People should mind their own business."

On the phone a red message light blinks, which she chooses to ignore, knowing it will be from Jeffrey. "Everyone's lonely," she says: "God, I wonder why we're doing this." On the one shoulder, as they undress, she tells him, "There's something about you that sends me," while on the other shoulder she frets, worrying about her future as well as competing with her younger self: "This is probably a mistake."

Before they depart the room, he pretends to place a call to her husband the cardiologist, complaining of a broken heart. From the cab on the street she hands him her pack of cigarettes because Jeffrey doesn't know she smokes. ("Thank you for smoking," might have been on the man's lips.)

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Copyright © 2011 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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