![]() ![]() Because who is Mary now? What was her commitment to Islam all about, now that she knows that her husband was cheating on her with someone outside the faith? The scene in which she scrutinises her near-naked body in the mirror is all but unbearable. ![]() So Mary’s hidden ordeal begins, involving a lacerating self-examination. ![]() She is humiliated and horrified by what she is uncovering on a moment-by-moment basis. Scanlan shows how she has suffered a triple mortification. Mary herself is the suspense she is the ticking bomb who could explode at any time. So Mary willingly becomes their cleaner and domestic intimate, helpful, hard-working and biddable, getting to know all about Genevieve and her relationship with Ahmed.Īfter Love has the agony of a domestic tragedy and the tension of a Hitchcock thriller. And Scanlan subtly shows how Mary is partly too dumbstruck by the situation to tell Genevieve the truth, but also partly aware that such a revelation would cause Genevieve to shut down, and Mary would never get the truth out of her. When Mary arrives, Genevieve (Nathalie Richard) breezily assumes that Mary is the new cleaner, tells her to come in and gives her a cleaner’s tabard to wear. So Mary makes the terrible cross-Channel ferry journey to see this woman for herself. When Ahmed dies of a heart attack, Mary is almost unbearably dignified in her whiteclad widowhood but, on going through Ahmed’s wallet, a French ID card falls out, showing the photo of a rather elegant blond woman called Genevieve, together with her address in Calais. Mary is placidly content with her life, her gently loving marriage and the meticulous practice of her Muslim faith. The couple live in Dover and he is a ferry captain, often away overnight or days at a time doing the cross-Channel run. She is Mary, a woman who converted to Islam on marrying her husband, Ahmed (Nasser Memarzia). Joanna Scanlan gives a superb lead performance, the best of her career so far. Over it is hovering a miasma of dread, rather than bluebirds. And though not really about Brexit, this film does feature the White Cliffs of Dover. W hat can we ever really know about each other? The mystery of other people’s lives, the unbridgeable gulf between us all – even, or especially, between married couples – is the subject of this outstanding drama from first-time film-maker Aleem Khan. ![]()
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December 2022
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