Impression: The beginning of this film reminds me of Ignorant Fairies (later renamed to His Secret Life) which I liked very much. It’s the same set up. A fairly happy marriage ends when a husband suddenly dies. The wife goes through his stuff and finds that he was living a parallel life. In both films, the wife get intrigued by his other life, but instead of exploring it by becoming a part of it, in After Love, she finds herself unable to tell the other woman who she is and what happened. Instead, she goes along with the other woman believing she is a house cleaner. Initially instead of getting involved with the people in his other life, Mary seems more intrigued by the objects. But slowly she develops a relationship with his son, Solomon. The film is very sparse on dialogue, and the longest talking part Mary has is about half way through the film when she tells Solomon about how she and Ahmed met. There is a very sweet bonding moment between them, as she speaks Urdu with him and cooks him Pakistani food.
The film is slow, and beautifully shot, with layered references to place and otherness. The physical distance of the two worlds: Dover and Calais is wonderfully visually represented by the many ferry rides across the Channel. Additionally, there is this third mythical place in the form of Pakistan where the husband/lover/dad was from, which acts as an invisible force uniting the three characters, but also separating them, because of how they’ve chosen to define themselves with respect to it. The white cliffs of Dover feature prominently as a metaphor for what Mary, the main character, is feeling throughout the film.
Constant comparisons with Ignorant Fairies in my mind keeps me thinking of what the differences between these films might suggest. Maybe you can conclude that there is some deeper truth about how Northern vs. Southern Europeans deal with situation: solemn suffering versus food and party. Or you can think of it as representative of how a gay man and a straight woman deal with it: making friends, forming community and inclusiveness, versus how two straight women might deal with it: holding grudges and secrecy. But maybe I am reading too much into it. After Love is very much its own film, and well worth seeing. But I do keep wondering if the writer/director has seen Ignorant Fairies. This is something I would have asked had I seen it at a live version of the London Film Festival instead of online.
Facts: A white middle aged English woman who converted to Islam for her husband in her youth deals with his sudden death and discovery of another life she didn’t know he lead.
My Buddhist reading: It’s hard to really know another person. All we can know is our own mind, and that’s not exactly easy either. Mary obviously thought she knew Ahmed, but he had a whole other life he kept secret from her. She then subtly thinks she knows Genevieve and Solomon and Genevieve thinks she knows Mary. But all any of them are doing is projecting their own biases and preconceived notions onto each other.
Apes Don't Read Philosophy 