(2010) A famous French female TV journalist, an American psychic, and a British boy eventually make contact, each supplying the others with something to help complete their quest.

Away from Paris on holiday with Didier (Thierry Neuvic), her producer and beau, Marie LeLay (Cécile de France) is nearly drowned when the island is struck by a tsunami; knocked unconscious, she experiences a vision (a window into another realm), before being rescued and revived by CPR. Reunited with Didier, they return to Paris (though she feels guilty about leaving a major story with several hundred thousand victims behind). In her first interview on her popular TV program, Window on Events, she uncharacteristically fails to aggressively question her subject about his company's exploitation of child labor in poor countries. Didier suggests she take some time off, even write the book she's long wanted to research on the former president of the French Republic, François Mitterrand.

In San Francisco George Lonegan (Matt Damon) hesitantly agrees to do one more psychic reading as a favor for an associate of his brother Billy (Jay Mohr), Christos, a middle-aged man wanting to get in touch with his deceased wife. Having previously told Billy, who tries to convince his younger sibling of his duty to unfortunate people, that "a life that's all about death is no life," George reiterates: "It's not a gift, Billy; it's a curse."

In London preadolescent twins of an alcoholic, drug-addicted mother, Marcus and Jason (George and Frankie McLaren) try to cover for her when social-services workers visit the home. When Jason goes out to get medicine to help his mother detoxify, he's harassed by teenage hoodlums and runs into the street where a van strikes and kills him. Devastated by the loss of his slightly older (by minutes) brother, on whom he depended for guidance, Marcus is taken into a foster home.

Scenes following the journeys of these three characters alternate throughout director, producer, and composer of the original score Clint Eastwood's modestly subtle cinematic explication of screenwriter Peter Morgan's exploration of the afterlife.

When Marie asks Didier if he believes in the hereafter, he answers that after death there's "an eternal void." She visits a hospice to speak with Dr Rousseau (Marthe Keller), an expert in near-death events whom she found through a Google search, about her otherworldly visions; Dr Rousseau affirms: "I think you experienced death."

Following his getting acquainted with Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard), a recent arrival in San Francisco seeking new friends, during their evening cooking class, George tells her he's re-evaluating and changing his priorities. Having invited her over for a meal, a message on the answering machine from Billy reveals George's secret past as a psychic, leading to his explaining how after a childhood illness and surgery he developed migraines, nightmares, and finally hallucinations that were actually connections with spirits of the dead. Reluctantly George accedes ("It's better to hold stuff back") to doing a reading for her.

Also searching the Internet, Marcus begins looking for someone with knowledge of the afterlife; initially he finds only religious dogma ("If you believe in Christ, you have nothing to fear") and phonies. In a strange incident of his cap (which belonged to Jason) getting away from him, he barely misses getting aboard a train that explodes from terrorist bombs in the underground tube.

Instead of writing a book about Mitterrand, Marie begins relating her experience with those of many others in a manuscript, Hereafter: The Conspiracy of Silence. Publication of the book takes her to a book fair in London to do readings and signings. Also present in the same building at the same time, George, recently laid off from his factory job as a "voluntary redundancy," has come to London, escaping from Billy's plan to have him resume psychic readings for paying customers, to listen to Derek Jacobi (as himself) - whose CDs of Charles Dickens's books have been George's passionate fascination - reading from the great English novelist's Little Dorrit. One more coincidence brings Marcus to the book fair as well.

In his brief contacts with inhabitants of the spirit world, from which George is given to understand that they recall their earthly life (many wanting to express apologies, regrets, and occasionally advice), move about in weightlessness, and "You can be all things all at once," little else is revealed about the hereafter.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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