thesmythley Review of After Love

After Love (2020)

Believable and powerful portrayal of loneliness, loss and betrayal

[7/10 · 1 November 2022]

After Love presents a realistic portrayal of a woman who goes through a whole spectrum of emotions in response to discovering a dark secret. Joanna Scanlan's portrayal of Mary, a woman who has discovered her husband was having an affair was excellent. It is intriguing yet deeply uncomfortable to see the central character being forced to deal with a painful situation, particularly when her means of dealing with her grief are morally dubious. However, we cannot help but be compelled to empathise with these morally dubious acts even though we hopefully might not endorse them ourselves. While we can empathise with the other characters the empathy that we feel towards them is offset and minimised by contrast to the loneliness of Mary and rightly so. At no point does Joanna Scanlan's performance feel hamfisted or stilted as we see her navigate through the turmoil generated by loss and, at the same time, infidelity. It is difficult not to feel anger on her behalf, yet what is more important about this film is the importance of finding a means of moving on and not letting the pain of infidelity consume her.