My Friend Eva

Eva has just turned fifty. She has been married twenty years, has two teenage children and a life in order. She goes to Rome for work and meets a screenwriter called Alex. The attraction is immediate and mutual. For the first time in years she remembers what falling in love feels like, and after she returns it changes how she sees her own life. Cesc Gay directs. Nora Navas plays Eva and Rodrigo de la Serna plays Alex, with Juan Diego Botto in the cast. Cesc Gay is known for talk driven films about relationships; his best known work is Truman. The subject is not betrayal but seeing your own life from outside. There is no great problem in Eva's marriage and the film offers no easy justification; the real matter is when habit stopped being a choice. The telling is unshowy: long conversation scenes, plain framing and little music. Nora Navas's performance carries the film; the viewer can only read what the character will do from her face. Its limit is how little happens; the narrative arrives nowhere and the ending is left open. Who it is for: viewers who like Spanish relationship drama and films built on conversation. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, almost nothing happens, and the film decides nothing.