I’ve noticed that films I see in the same day have started echoing each other. After watching sweet comedy Special People, I went down to the basement Videotheque and booked out new Brit romance, The Waiting Room. Thursday was obviously feelgood day.

Ralf Little and Anne-Marie Duff fall in love at first sight when they meet accidentally at a train station. So far, so Brief Encounter. Except that Celia Johnson wasn’t a divorced single parent shagging her next door neighbour’s husband and Leslie Howard wasn’t living in sin with a girlfriend he was bored of and wandering naked round the flat with his cock on show.

I’m a person who’s not so sure any more whether love is a lie we all want to believe in (I once described it as a mental illness to a girl I was seeing). But I still enjoy an intelligent romcom, or, as in this case, a rom.

After that opening love at first sight moment, we have to wait the entire length of the film before there’s any chance of them meeting again, even though we see it in their fantasies. Instead, each of them goes through the painful process of recognising their unhappy relationships for what they are and disentangling themselves. And maybe for a crazy fantasy about a person they don’t even know and might never see again.

It’s a slight film with some great performances and lots to say about love gone wrong. And it leaves you with a warm glow. Even a cynical bastard like me.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Edinburgh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.