210. After Love; movie review

 

 

AFTER LOVE

Cert 12A

89 mins

BBFC advice: Contains  infrequent strong language

What an unexpected pleasure - a return after a long hiatus to Nottingham's Broadway cinema coincided with this beautifully acted and thoughtful drama.

Joanna Scanlan is the perfect choice as Mary, a middle-aged woman who is exposed to sudden grief when her husband (Nasser Memarzia) dies very suddenly from a heart attack.

Mary met Ahmed as a teenager and converted to Islam, learned Urdu and immersed herself in his world.

Decades later, she is left to sort out his possessions and is stunned to discover the photo of another woman (Nathalie Richard) in his wallet.

She then ploughs through his phone texts and it becomes clear that the cross-channel ferry captain had a mistress in France as well as his British spouse.

So, she catches a bus to Calais and decides she will confront her love rival.

But that is not exactly how things turn out and fate enables her to discover even more about her husband's double life than she imagined.

I will not go into further detail but suffice to say that Richard is also impressive as the 'other woman' as is Talid Ariss as her son.

But I lived Aleem Khan's twisting and dramatic movie through Scanlan whose character might be unbelievable if I had not witnessed how bereavement can prompt people into bad decisions.

She makes many but there is never any doubt that she is a good person just trying to find answers after a shocking revelation.

Anyway, thanks to her and Khan's fine direction and clever writing, After Love had made rapt.

Reasons to watch: Outstanding performances and an intriguing premise

Reasons to avoid: Probably outside of the realms of reality at times

Laughs: None

Jumps: None

Vomit: Yes

Nudity: Yes

Overall rating: 8.5/10

Did you know? According to The Guardian, about 5,000 British people convert to Islam every year and most of them are women.

The final word. Aleem Khan: "The film is semi-autobiographic; the ideas, the characters, the emotional grit that it is exploring is so close to my experience growing up mixed race, feeling like you were kind of in two worlds. The character of Mary was inspired by my mum, and she was the vessel to explore all that my family have experienced." CineVue

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