Love Wins

Cast: Keira Knightley,Sam Worthington,Eva Mendes,Guillaume Canet

Rating: ***1/2

What’s love got to do with it,or sex,for that matter? A provocative film about love,temptation,cheating and the boundaries of it,Last Night is one of those rare films that linger on the evening.

Michael (Worthington) loves his wife but finds himself attracted to Laura (Mendes) from work. Joanna (Knightley) loves Michael back,is hurt when she realises his attraction for Laura,but finds how easily it can strike when she runs into a former boyfriend,Alex (Canet).

A regular couple,with not-so-regular good looks,a big,lived-in house,and an enviable relationship,they struggle with their feelings,debate their choices,marvel at their circumstances,and yes,wonder at their chances.

The first shadow of doubt comes between them over nothing more than an intimate chat Michael has with Laura on the balcony during an office party. They have a small tiff and Joanna finally bids Michael bye with a sorry,saying she may have overreacted to the glances he and Laura shared at the party,and that while the two of them were definitely attracted to each other,there was probably nothing more to it.

But soon after Michael has left town with Laura for an office trip to Philadelphia,Joanna finds a former but lingering love Alex waiting for her at the local coffee shop. They are meeting after two years and he doesn’t hide his attraction for her. She responds in kind,dressing up for an evening out with special care.

Last Night cuts between the night Michael and Laura are sharing in Philadelphia,and Joanna and Alex back in New York. Michael and Joanna talk about their marriage,they confess their love for their spouses,but what’s brewing is evident to all four of them.

In the film,where glances mean almost everything,and the limits of loyalties stretched,Worthington and Mendes smoulder a lot more than Kinghtley and Canet — despite her being in purple and him being a French writer from Paris. And even of those two,Mendes alone packs enough to set the house on fire.

Tadjedin (director and writer) does her cause no good by introducing a dog and an irksome friend of Alex whose special qualification again happens to be that he is a literary kind,giving him the leeway to ask almost anything over a dinner table.

However disconcerting as these patches might be,Tadjedin’s keen eye for relationships is evident. In the silences that seek to be heard in a marriage,when Michael and Joanna fight. And when Joanna replies to Alex’s question on why they ever split up. “What the two of us have,” she tells him,“cannot stand on its own.” “It’s because it’s in the middle of all this,” she says,sitting in the kitchen of her husband’s best friend,with her husband’s photo looking at them from the mantelpiece.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com