Director: Deepa Mehta(2003)
When Tom Avery (played by Bruce Greenwood) meets Fay at a party, he falls for her in ninety minutes flat. Tom is no stranger to romance— he’s a self-proclaimed unlucky man who’s admittedly hooked on love, given his strange upbringing involving twenty-seven mothers and past relationships with three ex-wives with whom he still remains in contact.
In Deepa Mehta’s breathtakingly gorgeous, unabashedly romantic, and slightly fantastical film based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields, “geography is destiny,” and the random coincidences that unite are considered our own little republic where lives and loves intersect. Some of the visuals will remain with you long after the film is over— causing viewers hooked on romance to swoon with glee including my personal favorite, understated scene wherein Greenwood cautiously, softly hugs Emilia Fox on the street and suddenly, the two are adorned in elegant evening wear, reminding all of us about those precious, addictive first touches at the beginning of a relationship. Romantic cynics need not apply although this film just may make a convert out of you as Mehta depicts the way love heightens each of our five senses through magical imagery.
