(1997; English and untranslated French) "Dreams have a morning after," sings Mark Knopfler at the close of this intimate exploration from director Philip Saville of a young (but feeling middle-aged) Englishman's second thoughts about his life's choices, based on Julian Barnes's novel, adapted to the screen by Adrian Hodges. At about thirty in 1977, Chris Lloyd (Christian Bale), during late-night walks alone to ease a rising prevenance of panic, takes stock of his circumstances in Eastwood - eight years of marriage with Marion (Emily Watson), a baby, a mortgage, a dull job in London, his ambition to become an artistic photographer undeveloped - when his best friend, free-wheeling Toni (Lee Ross), a writer ("who believes in telling the truth") who's been gallivanting about the globe, returns following a ten-year absence: "What's happened to you, Chris?"

Cynical Marion's perceptive perspective pierces Toni's poetic façade: "Nobody stocks your books." Declaring his love for Chris, somewhat farcically Toni proclaims in front of Marion: "Chris and I were meant to be together."

Marion has told Chris that his having affairs would be good for their marriage ("I'll still cook your dinner and do your washing and ironing"); he asks her: "Would you still love me no matter what I did?"

The two pals go out together to a punk-rock concert, getting loaded on dope and drink; Chris reminisces about those "great days" as school chums in the early '60s when as teenagers they despised the middleclass lifestyle of Eastwood, vowing not to become members of its "bourgeois dormitory," as a retired commuter (John Wood) referred to Metroland (It "isn't a place; it's a state of mind") as he (a phantom?) and Chris shared a compartment on a train.

Accidentally opening a book (Gustave Flaubert's last novel, L'Education Sentimentale) with old black-and-white photos of sincere, sexy, direct Annick (Elsa Zylberstein), his former girlfriend in Paris, releases a flood of memories of their romance. After living with Annick for several months, Chris, posing as a Frenchman with his camera, encountered Marion with her two male friends playing cricket with a baguette for a bat; she promptly saw through his pretense and began to attract his interest in the present tense. When he tells her of his not wanting ever to have a wife and family with responsibilities, rather wanting to remain in Paris as an artist, she says: "You're not original enough not to."

Back in the present, Toni, malevolent in his motives and sticky with jealousy, attempts to convince Chris that he's trapped in boredom, coercing his long-time mate to question himself ("Did I make the right choice?"), and does his best to upset the middleclass apple cart, making passes at Marion and setting Chris up with a fetching female at a party. When Chris (wondering if Marion really meant what she'd said about having affairs) tells Joanna (Amanda Ryan) that he's married, she replies: "I'm not prejudiced."

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

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