An up-and-coming chef and a recent divorcée find their lives forever changed when a chance encounter brings them together, in a decade-spanning, deeply moving romance.
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CinemaSerf
7
By CinemaSerf
Suffice to say that "Tobias" (Andrew Garfield) isn't having a good day. He is sitting alone in an hotel room without even a biro to sign his newly arrived divorce papers. He sets off to rectify that but en route back unexpectedly (and painfully) encounters successful chef "Almut" (Florence Pugh) before he awakens, in a fetching neck-brace, in an hospital corridor. That's the tentative beginning for what becomes quite an engagingly portrayed love story that manages to marry quite a bit of humour with some tragedy, tension and toilet-floor activity as we are presented with two characters who might resonate with the viewer more than many. The story itself isn't really anything new. What makes this work is the dynamic between Garfield and Pugh. His is a more understated role, her's the more forceful - but both complement the other really quite effectively as the threads of their respective stories and of their burgeoning relationship are quite poignantly interwoven into a current timeline that has already pretty much telegraphed the inevitability of the denouement to us. It's that chemistry that rings true and even though the travails are rather piled up on the couple, their solutions to many of their issues are plausibly played out amidst some affection, temper tantrums, selfishness, tears and fine dining. Lee Braithwaite appears sparingly but quite usefully as her commis "Jade" who manages to allow us all to take the occasional breather from the increasing intensity of the plot, but essentially this is a two-hander that tugs gently at the heart-strings, but is not a film that oozes sentimentality. Always crack an egg on flat surface!
