DRAMA; 1hr 55min
STARRING: Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Anthony Hopkins
Lost in thought: Law and Weisz
At the beginning and end of its multiple stories, 360 references taking a fork in the road. But which fork? Peter Morgan’s screenplay is all about the butterfly effect of the choices we make.
It begins in Vienna, where a newly minted escort (Lucia Siposová) is about to meet nervous client Michael (Law) in a hotel bar. From there, a chain of city-spanning events unfold in a multifaceted profile of love’s shifting faces. In London, Michael’s opaque wife (Weisz) is involved with a studly photographer (Juliano Cazarré) whose desolate girlfriend (Maria Flor) leaves him when she learns of the affair. En route to Brazil, she encounters both a chivalrous father (Hopkins) obsessed with the loss of his daughter and a time-bomb younger man (Ben Foster).
The Constant Gardener director Fernando Meirelle’s tightly wrought construction has surprising turns and a rounded symmetry to its conclusion. I enjoyed the Crash-style duck and weave, and although its elaborate contrivance risks descending into glibness, the force of its momentum carries the show.
