Reunited at a wedding after many years, former lovers again feel the pull of a mutual attraction neither is willing to admit. Escaping the reception for the privacy of a hotel room, the unnamed pair explore the choices of the past that led them to the present.
In the end, the problem with Conversations with Other Women is not that it pulls an ordinary romance into unfamiliar shapes but that it doesn't pull far enough. It may be dotted with fine observations, yet somehow the charm of its novelty grows stale, and the airless feeling of a closed set begins to fester.
An intimate movie in every sense, Conversations With Other Women sets out to explore well-trammeled yet at the same time uncharted territory without grinding any axes. What it offers is a modest fantasy that will be familiar to contemporaries of Bonham Carter and Eckhart especially. It's sad and funny, satisfying and frustrating, totally familiar.
None of it is quite believable -- the film is too studied, too forward in its conceits to be entirely satisfying -- but Mr. Eckhart and Ms. Bonham Carter approach their roles with intelligence and conviction.
The battle of the sexes is restaged to clever but inconsequential effect in Conversations With Other Women. Very much a case of old wine in a new bottle.
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Salon by Andrew O'Hehir
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
Los Angeles Times by Carina Chocano
The New York Times by Dana Stevens
TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
Variety by Todd McCarthy