I will try not to spoil the movie.
Don't read this unless you've watched!
A deliberately slow paced, but not plodding, film. Definitely not for action fans.
The story follows 2 couples over one weekend. Each couple has stolen away to a resort town during the off season. The similarities: both are illicit student-teacher relationships, both students are approximately 16 years old, and both teachers are approximately 36 years old, the age difference in each relationship is 18-20 years. Also, both teachers are being unfaithful to another partner. The difference: one couple is male teacher/female student, while the other is female teacher/male student.
The scenes switch from one couple to the other, initially each with identical conversations, to set the stage that the relationships are running nearly parallel to one another. Slowly, as the differences in sexual dynamics dictate, the course of the two relationships differs, but only slightly.
Both weekends end with the couples returning home on separate trains, each apparently having broken up.
The movie deliberately obfuscates time periods, focusing mostly on the two people in the relationship. Because the movie alternates from one couple to the other, one is more likely (as I did until the last minute of the movie) to assume they are spending their weekend together at the same time. Small details dribble out towards the end of the movie, but not many. The final cell phone call at the end of the movie confirms that "Beth" & "Liz" are, in fact, the same person, 20 years apart. "Beth" got what she wanted -- her Aiden, only to live a lonely, isolated life that wasn't what she expected, finally having an affair of her own.
This how she knew better than to run off with Daz, because she'd run off before & knew Daz would probably end up as unhappy as she did.
I was wondering as the movie reached the end, "what the hell was the point of this, again?" A good reason to watch a movie through to the end.
Don't read this unless you've watched!
A deliberately slow paced, but not plodding, film. Definitely not for action fans.
The story follows 2 couples over one weekend. Each couple has stolen away to a resort town during the off season. The similarities: both are illicit student-teacher relationships, both students are approximately 16 years old, and both teachers are approximately 36 years old, the age difference in each relationship is 18-20 years. Also, both teachers are being unfaithful to another partner. The difference: one couple is male teacher/female student, while the other is female teacher/male student.
The scenes switch from one couple to the other, initially each with identical conversations, to set the stage that the relationships are running nearly parallel to one another. Slowly, as the differences in sexual dynamics dictate, the course of the two relationships differs, but only slightly.
Both weekends end with the couples returning home on separate trains, each apparently having broken up.
The movie deliberately obfuscates time periods, focusing mostly on the two people in the relationship. Because the movie alternates from one couple to the other, one is more likely (as I did until the last minute of the movie) to assume they are spending their weekend together at the same time. Small details dribble out towards the end of the movie, but not many. The final cell phone call at the end of the movie confirms that "Beth" & "Liz" are, in fact, the same person, 20 years apart. "Beth" got what she wanted -- her Aiden, only to live a lonely, isolated life that wasn't what she expected, finally having an affair of her own.
This how she knew better than to run off with Daz, because she'd run off before & knew Daz would probably end up as unhappy as she did.
I was wondering as the movie reached the end, "what the hell was the point of this, again?" A good reason to watch a movie through to the end.