Luxurious settings, a frigid urban scenery, the periphery of professional assignations, and an immoderate presentation of liquor among other paratactic devices offer us a leisurely approach woven with thoughtful even if sometimes almost ill-timed reflections on matters that matter and are confounded when people in amorous affairs meet and do not meet sentiments collapsed into trust and the question of lust.
This is a movie that works also as a muted - if there was ever one - vehicle for Knightley: she occupies a lot of takes that signal, if not signify, something of her uneasy beauty (notice how uneasy she is when she laughs, otherwise that may pass for a frivolous approach to her role, but, though this is admittedly far-fetched, she reminded me of Shakespeare's Cleopatra who "can play herself, rather than be herself", in a critic's words, and we may mistake her frivolous uneasiness, as it appears here and there, to call it that, so in the end we may take it for a less than marvelous performance: she - though confounded - maintains her enigma, as the last shot exemplifies).
Of course she needs Worthington's worthy performance (to continue in the Shakespeherian vein, he would give a perfect fallen Anthony I think; his excursion into the Australian Macbeth and then into his two war-movie roles, to call them that, as Everyman, contrasted with the rough-hewn and vulnerable performance - have we witnessed such a boyish abandon, only to resume justly right afterwards, the morning after he consummates his night with his new female colleague, in the pillow-scene? - makes him an under-appreciated actor).
There may be some oddities of time-and-dialogue coordination, if they are that, that seem to prolong the effect of amorous misgivings' impact between two, or the quartet of people involved. But even if the writer-and-director of this film is a new-comer, so that we may detect flaws, the earnestness of editing is just in giving us the confused feeling if what we witness is a remembrance or a (failed) repetition, as that scene in the elevator between Canet and Knightley lingeringly portrays. This may pass for affectation, repression in its handling, but it is the right amount of what we have to witness, of what we have to be shown - is it our own?- the economy of failed, enacted pathos.
There are so many details to be appreciated, appreciated, that is, in its almost 19th century sense of the word: Mendes' straightforward retraction from her "night" that may characterize her as calculating - but that would mistake her sorrow, Knightley's trembling lips in a fractioned close-up towards the end, Canet's friend's supporting role (though one may wish his companion's more active participation), the quasi-80's sense of romance (watch that emblematic New York dawn), how Worthington's and Knightley's accents accentuate an immigrant sense of class-numb, quasi-repressed privilege.
I wonder if one could say this film is not about rehearsing luxury and how this is crossed with feelings, even though it may partake of luxury itself; but this does not wound aesthetically the film, I think. I like the phrase of the late psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, "to talk is to sex", sex in the sense of sexual position, where one talks from, not the act itself, that is the way, say, Bergman exemplifies it in "Persona", in that scene where narration is - and does not substitute - sex; that is part of collapsing doubt (into) trust and lust. It's what Knightley admits, saying goodbye to Canet, "What I wouldn't give to have tired of you".
But our luxury is never a luxury out of time. Comparisons are made with "Eyes Wide Shut". But where Kidman, the woman, says directly the couple should have sex, Knightley is in the brink of talking. No one guarantees she is going to talk about last night, and that is an act of love, coming from the film.
This is a movie that works also as a muted - if there was ever one - vehicle for Knightley: she occupies a lot of takes that signal, if not signify, something of her uneasy beauty (notice how uneasy she is when she laughs, otherwise that may pass for a frivolous approach to her role, but, though this is admittedly far-fetched, she reminded me of Shakespeare's Cleopatra who "can play herself, rather than be herself", in a critic's words, and we may mistake her frivolous uneasiness, as it appears here and there, to call it that, so in the end we may take it for a less than marvelous performance: she - though confounded - maintains her enigma, as the last shot exemplifies).
Of course she needs Worthington's worthy performance (to continue in the Shakespeherian vein, he would give a perfect fallen Anthony I think; his excursion into the Australian Macbeth and then into his two war-movie roles, to call them that, as Everyman, contrasted with the rough-hewn and vulnerable performance - have we witnessed such a boyish abandon, only to resume justly right afterwards, the morning after he consummates his night with his new female colleague, in the pillow-scene? - makes him an under-appreciated actor).
There may be some oddities of time-and-dialogue coordination, if they are that, that seem to prolong the effect of amorous misgivings' impact between two, or the quartet of people involved. But even if the writer-and-director of this film is a new-comer, so that we may detect flaws, the earnestness of editing is just in giving us the confused feeling if what we witness is a remembrance or a (failed) repetition, as that scene in the elevator between Canet and Knightley lingeringly portrays. This may pass for affectation, repression in its handling, but it is the right amount of what we have to witness, of what we have to be shown - is it our own?- the economy of failed, enacted pathos.
There are so many details to be appreciated, appreciated, that is, in its almost 19th century sense of the word: Mendes' straightforward retraction from her "night" that may characterize her as calculating - but that would mistake her sorrow, Knightley's trembling lips in a fractioned close-up towards the end, Canet's friend's supporting role (though one may wish his companion's more active participation), the quasi-80's sense of romance (watch that emblematic New York dawn), how Worthington's and Knightley's accents accentuate an immigrant sense of class-numb, quasi-repressed privilege.
I wonder if one could say this film is not about rehearsing luxury and how this is crossed with feelings, even though it may partake of luxury itself; but this does not wound aesthetically the film, I think. I like the phrase of the late psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, "to talk is to sex", sex in the sense of sexual position, where one talks from, not the act itself, that is the way, say, Bergman exemplifies it in "Persona", in that scene where narration is - and does not substitute - sex; that is part of collapsing doubt (into) trust and lust. It's what Knightley admits, saying goodbye to Canet, "What I wouldn't give to have tired of you".
But our luxury is never a luxury out of time. Comparisons are made with "Eyes Wide Shut". But where Kidman, the woman, says directly the couple should have sex, Knightley is in the brink of talking. No one guarantees she is going to talk about last night, and that is an act of love, coming from the film.