The Other Woman tells the all-too-familiar story of a man who leaves his wife to be with the younger woman he works with, but from the perspective of the younger woman, changing it from a cautionary tale about the importance of reining in one’s libido and into the story of one woman’s coping with the knowledge that she’s irreparably changed the lives of three people to get what she wanted. It’s a film rife with undertones of resentment and regret which gradually work their way to the surface as the mistress-turned-wife comes to terms with her actions and accepts the hypocrisy of pushing away others in her life whose own actions mirror those of hers and the man she sleeps with. Despite a few problems, The Other Woman is built on strong performances creating characters spinning in little private circles of despair with a script that doesn’t hit benchmarks as early as it needs to for the final act to really pay off.
Emilia Greenleaf (Natalie Portman) crosses paths with Jack (Scott Cohen) as co-workers and over the course of business trips and meetings, they fall in love. Upon the revelation that Emilia is pregnant with Jack’s child, he finally makes the move to leave his wife, Carolyne (Lisa Kudrow), leaving their son William (Charlie Tahan) to the life of a child with divorced parents. Emilia and Jack marry and the child is born only to die three days later. The two suffer with the grief in that way parents who’ve suffered a loss typically do: separately and with unspoken resentment of their spouse for a pain they can’t place. Harboring that between them, they attempt to go on with their lives, the hardest part being Emilia gaining the favor of William who can’t articulate that he secretly hopes his father and mother will get back together. However as life unfolds and William learns his mother has no intention of fulfilling his reunion fantasy, he accepts the new maternal figure in bits and pieces. Emilia on the other hand fights with a hidden source of guilt and sense of frustration that her mother is reuniting with her adulterous father – whose habits clearly reflect those of her husband.
The adult cast is an interesting creation. Natalie Portman has been bouncing between pseudo-adult and funny, young adult roles for the past few years, and The Other Woman, made back in 2009, might be her most successful crack at an adult character, though with a clear wry and sarcastic flavor. Emilia, as Portman portrays her, is the most complex character Portman has ever produced and ever since she’s been extracting threads of this character and adapting it for other roles. Then you have Kudrow who rose under the guise of Friends’ ditzy Phoebe, and took a few years to realize that playing the same airheaded personality wasn’t the way to go. She’s since moved on to more bitter characters but she still hasn’t found a way to let go of a lot of the roots of Phoebe and consequently small nuances make their way into every character she plays, essentially undermining their effectiveness. One particularly good scene between Portman and Kudrow near the end solves this problem entirely, but it’s an isolated occurrence.
For testosterone, Cohen, despite being the adult male lead, has such a minor part in the film overall that he’s more of a placeholder, with the real brunt of the dramatic interaction from a male falling on the shoulders of Tahan, whose William is that all-too-common in films, precociously self-aware adolescent who calls out adults on their foibles but switches to vulnerability just in time to endear himself. But he never does this effectively until the final third of the film, and thus it’s hard to hate Portman’s character too much for being the root of William’s discontent.
The film is a simply filmed drama so the HD never has to work too hard. Suffice to say, your experience with this one won’t be significantly different should you opt for the cheaper DVD copy instead.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Again proving that DVD is the way to go, the Blu-ray doesn’t have any extras except for a trailer.
The Other Woman is definitely worth a watch if only to see one of Portman’s strongest showings, even if it is from two years back.
"The Other Woman" is on sale May 17, 2011 and is rated R. Drama. Directed by Don Roos. Written by Don Roos, Ayelet Waldman. Starring Charlie Tahan, Natalie Portman, Lisa Kudrow, Scott Cohen.
