(2004) In London an Irish-American woman, referred to as She (Joan Allen), married to a British politician, Anthony (Sam Neill), falls in love with a Lebanese chef, referred to as He (Simon Abkarian). Lost in a loveless union - organizing their lives to avoid each other - She, a biologist who has traded her Catholic faith for science (dissecting cells to uncover the mystery, for while God might not lie, God keeps secrets: Is objectivity just a point of view?) at a formal affair with Anthony, cold and emotionally controlled, is an easy quarry for His good manners over facial features: "I wouldn't leave such a beauty out of my sight."

But differences in point of view must be confronted and surmounted in this intimate romantic drama from director/writer Sally Potter, who also composed the original music; the dialogue is in verse (iambic pentameter), and when the visual image, the music, and the words come together, the result, transcending the prosaic, becomes profoundly poetic (though subtitles would have been helpful).

In bed together, He and She count the mundane and mystical ways of love from one to two to three to four walls to infinity and back to the one and only. With her friend Kate's teenage daughter Grace (Stephanie Leonidas), She agrees that "Things are really not as they seem," mentally reciting the chemical elements at the foundation of existence; foe and false Anthony imparts to Grace (while taking hold of her hand) recriminations against his wife, who then repeats to She.

Both He and She know of holy wars - in Lebanon and in Ireland - though his experience has been first-hand (witnessing with his own eyes when others "killed a man and murdered an idea"); He fled his surgical practice for kitchen knives in England. As Christmas approaches, political and cultural differences separating Middle East (defense of Islamic law, not kind but fair) from West (attitudes of superiority) and imagining jealousies - exacerbated at the restaurant from taunting by the Christian, misogynist, and atheist views of his co-workers, Billy, Virgil, and Whizzer - He loses his job after a violent altercation and breaks off contact with She.

In her attempt at reconciling their differences - "Why do you make me dream of you?" He demands, saying She's unclean, sharing the sins of Americans, knowing nothing of Arabic or the Qur'an, taking her privileges for granted while he's a foreigner - She says: "I am not your enemy."

Interior monologues and soliloquies create a philosophical undercurrent of commentary. Answering her cell phone at a critical moment in her relationship with He, She rushes off to the hospital bedside in Belfast of her dying aunt, a communist sympathizer, whose thoughts escape with her expiring breath: "I want to hear you protest of my leaving… I want to know this isn't just a dream…. I want to see you grieve… I want my death to wake you up." Following her aunt's last wish for "one day in Cuba," realizing life is short, She goes to Havana, sending He a plane ticket to fly from Beirut, where he has returned to reconsider former friendships and a medical career.

She and Anthony's housekeeper (Shirley Henderson), referring to herself as a "dirt consultant" (nothing can be cleaned or absolved absolutely), closely observes her employers (on the sheets, in the toilet, the stains, the evidence) and comments ("We leave a stain" - cataloguing microorganisms - "We leave a mess when we depart") like a Greek chorus throughout: "And, in the end, it simply isn't worth / Your while to try and clean your life away. / You can't. For, everything you do or say / Is there, forever. It leaves evidence. / In fact it's really only common sense; / There's no such thing as nothing, not at all. / It may be really very, very small, / But it's still there. In fact, I think I'd guess / That 'no' does not exist. There's only 'yes.'"

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

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