The Other Woman (2011)

Natalie Portman was excellent, the rest of the cast very good especially Charlie Tahan who played the the stepchild. The sound track was spot on. Only confusing part to me was I watched it on Netflix as "The Other Woman " when the actual title was " Love and other impossible pursuits ".

This movie had me in tears at points while I watched the struggles of all the members of this extended network of family come to terms with a loss of some form or other. And then the gradual acceptance of the situation if not, the people involved.Definitely not a comedy but I didn't go into it believing it was anything but a drama. However there are some lighter moments intertwined into the sadness, which only made it more realistic to everyday life.------------- -------------

I have to say that I really don't understand where any of the other reviews are coming from. Everyone is way off. I got the impression from the reviews that Natalie Portman's character was a bad person. But she (and the stepson) were the only likable characters. She may have made a few mistakes with the stepson, but where anyone got the idea (especially the idiotic husband/father) that she somehow wanted to harm the stepson, it's really uncalled for and disturbing to watch. So she made a mistake about feeding him dairy when he was lactose intolerant - she thought the ex-wife was being an overprotective witch and tried calling out on that matter. So she let the boy ice skate without a helmet. He had a thick hat on and he had fun, didn't get hurt, and they actually bonded. The attacks on her quality of step-parenting is way out of line.I don't understand how anyone could think she was vicious to people because of losing her baby. Maybe Natalie Portman played the character differently than in the original novel. Maybe the script was translated poorly. I just didn't get the feeling that she was a bad person at all, nor did I get the feeling that she was lashing out at anyone unjustifiably or that she was projecting her grief onto others through rage. She wasn't at all. I would characterize this movie as thorny, but things start to clean up near the end. I was expecting a downward spiral toward devastation based on the reviews and that didn't happen. Things didn't magically turn wonderful but things did start to turn around for the better. The times that Natalie Portman's character lashed out at others was justified at the other person's poor behavior. She got angry at her stepson when he kept forcing the idea of selling the deceased baby's possessions on eBay. I can understand that, it's insensitive for him to say. She also lashed out at her own father for his infidelity in the past, and that, too, was justified. He cheated on his wife (her mom), and nobody had actually shown any anger at him until then. How anyone could say that she has no right to be angry at her father is beyond me - her mom was hurt, and children can take on that pain as their own, to be protective.She was a decent stepmom and I don't see how anyone could say she and her stepson had a difficult relationship. That was entirely a projection of the ex-wife's viciousness onto her, through the son. It made her seem like a neglectful stepmom, but she was a good one as far as I'm concerned. The ex-wife was just vicious, beyond bitter. Apparently the young new wife broke up the marriage but my impression was that the marriage was already over with. As the movie progresses, the step son starts showing empathy toward the stepmom and deceased baby sister and so he starts developing a more likable character. The husband really is just cold and never really actually shows empathy or care toward the wife. He never really sides with her and finds every opportunity to side against her. He's of course dealing with the viciousness of his ex-wife, but he doesn't stand up for his new wife nearly as much as he could/should, and projects some of that negativity onto Natalie Portman's character. He is soon to reject her and let the marriage fall apart than actually be forgiving toward her struggles. There is a certain bias that he seems to have that she is worth discarding and a difficult woman to deal with, but I really don't see how that is justified. The only love that I could see in this movie ended up being between the boy and his stepmom. Everyone else was just so cold. Maybe that's just bad acting, bad script, I dunno.In the end, the boy overhears her worries that she somehow smothered her baby, and he asks his mom (the ex-wife), who happens to be a doctor, about the matter, and the ex-wife patches up the bridge by investigating the matter to reassure her that the baby did die of natural causes.This movie reminded me of the film "A Serious Man" by the Coen brothers, that had a very distinct Jewish cynical theme of the victim being blamed for the tragedy itself, when everyone else around them is the problem. I don't know if this is a theme in Jewish culture, but it's a bit disturbing.The movie is definitely a bit thorny, and character behavior does seem out of place or projected incorrectly. Maybe on purpose, maybe a certain Jewish cynicism, maybe just a messy script-from-book to work with. Like A Serious Man, it may not be something you can watch more than once, because it may just be too emotionally difficult/tumultuous.

Natalie Portman delivers an astonishing character study as Emilia Greenleaf a woman who has, in her own words, broken one marriage, and seems unable to stop herself breaking her own following the death of her three day old baby. We see her demise through her relationships with William (Tahan), her husband Jack (Cohen), and his first wife Carolyn (Kudrow). When Portman is on screen with William the film seems to move in a believable direction and yet with Jack and with Carolyn, alone or together something seems not quite as understandably real.At first I wanted to blame a lack of chemistry between Portman and Cohen and yet there are tender moments seemingly nullifying my questions about their relationship. Charlie Tahan is excellent throughout and so I am left with a question mark against the casting of Jack and Carolyn, or, perhaps, the screenplay involving them. Portman's character is simply played out as a determined and privileged young woman who cannot cope with being denied what she really wants and needs above all else - to be seen as the person she thinks she is and not the woman she really is. Her defensiveness is seen in many of the scenes Portman delivers which is why I consider her performance as astonishingly accurate and I just wish the flaws elsewhere could have been better handled.Although there is a rewarding end to this film, a catharsis if you wish it to be one, it still leaves a feeling that you have watched an unfinished work, one which could and should have delivered so much more from the characters around Emilia. Perhaps, at heart, the film cannot get beyond a feeling of superficiality that surrounds some of the plot, which is a pity because it could have been so much better.