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‘After Love’ Review: A Double Life Reveals a World of Cultural Difference in a Strong British Debut

Much celebrated in its native Britain, Aleem Khan's restrained, psychologically probing debut follows a white Muslim woman on the trail of her husband's secret life.

By Guy Lodge

Film Critic

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As the crow flies, only about 30 miles separate the port towns of Dover and Calais — a distance that, in many parts of the world, wouldn’t span any greater culture shift than a slight tweak in accent. When those miles are filled with the English Channel, however, opposite coastlines represent opposite worlds, where everything from language to sexual mores are poles apart. It’s a short but jolting journey, an exercise in social and geographic disorientation that British-Pakistani filmmaker Aleem Khan probes to layered, thoughtful effect in his auspicious first feature “ After Love .”

Galvanized by Joanna Scanlan ‘s quiet, searing turn as a white Muslim widow piecing together the separate lives her late husband led on both shores, Khan’s debut confidently blends old-school melodrama with a contemporary political consciousness, suggesting broader, Brexit-era cross-cultural friction while maintaining an intimate domestic focus. Selected for the Critics’ Week program of 2020’s nixed Cannes festival, Khan’s unassuming debut has gone on to robust arthouse success on home turf, sweeping last year’s British Independent Film Awards and scoring a couple of major BAFTA nominations. A North American distributor, however, has yet to step forward for a film that is by no means limited in its cultural resonance to the narrow band of south England and northern France it evocatively explores.

Though “After Love” mints an intriguing career for its young writer-director, already BAFTA-nominated for his short film work, it is equally notable as a belated big-screen breakthrough for Scanlan, a well-regarded character actor best known in the U.K. for her TV comedy work (“Getting On,” “The Thick of It”) and an invaluable supporting presence in such British heritage pictures as “Girl With a Pearl Earring” and “The Invisible Woman.” But she’s never previously been gifted a film lead as demanding as the one she aces here. As Mary, a bereaved Dover homemaker caught between lives lived, imagined and concealed, she brings a grounding emotional conviction to a character whose decisions sometimes come from a soap-opera playbook, and deftly essays the various splintered identities of a white woman committed to the Muslim faith she took up for love, further adrift and incognito as a Briton in France.

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After a brief prologue alluding to warm, placid marital contentment, we cut to Mary in the immediate throes of mourning for her husband Ahmed, a ferry captain who spent his days shuttling across the water to Calais and back — routinely sampling a Continental life she’s hitherto been happy to gaze at from the shore. The local Muslim community supports her in her grief, but she prefers isolation; she and Ahmed never had children, and there’s nary a mention of her blood relatives, hinting at painful ties severed over cultural conflicts decades before. This kind of tacit angst is typical of Khan’s lean, precise screenplay, at least in the establishing stages; burning burdens are more vocally unloaded later on.

Yet as the unquestioningly devoted Mary sorts through Ahmed’s effects, fragments of a double life emerge: the identity card of a French woman in his wallet, intimate-sounding voicemails on his phone. Her curiosity leads her across the Channel and to the Calais address of sharp, chic working mom Genevieve (a superb Nathalie Richard). When we meet Genevieve’s biracial son Solomon (Talid Ariss), it becomes clear that her relationship with Ahmed has been a long and storied one. Mistaking Mary, in her modest salwar kameez, for an immigrant cleaner, Genevieve unwittingly lets her love rival into her home. Panicked, Mary goes with the misunderstanding, with all the messy consequences you might expect.

If Khan’s writing never wholly sells us on this key contrivance, “After Love” compensates for this leap with the fine-grained authenticity of its quotidian observation. Many of the film’s most vivid, affecting scenes detail the ordinary business of Mary’s home life and her relationship to religion, performed by Scanlan with intricate attention to physical gesture and routine. We observe her hushed at prayer, but even making roti, handling the dough with palpable tenderness, becomes its own kind of near-spiritual ritual. Khan contrasts this whispery realism, meanwhile, with stark breaks to dissociative fantasy reflecting Mary’s inner turmoil: In her reveries, a ceiling cracks and crashes and floods, and the white cliffs of Dover crumble to powder.

The film’s political commentary likewise emerges in flashes and fissures. The sporadic overlaps and chasms in Marie and Genevieve’s respective experiences point to shared histories of subjugation as women, both with and without children — but also vastly different relationships to cultural and religious mixing, shaped both by national and personal psychology. A queer element to this complex family crisis complicates matters further, in ways teased though not fully explored by a film that already has plenty of conflict, both latent and confrontational, to negotiate. Spare and pared-back in all respects ranging from performance to its clean, airily-lensed aesthetic, “After Love” carries bulky baggage with an elegant lightness, leaving its audience with further unpacking to do.

Reviewed online, March 12, 2022. Running time: 89 MIN.

• Production: (U.K.) A BFI, BBC Films presentation of a The Bureau production. (World sales: The Bureau, Paris.) Producer: Matthieu de Braconier. Executive producers: Eva Yates, Rose Garnett, Natascha Wharton, Vincent Gadelle. Co-producers: Gabrielle Dumon, Gerardine O'Flynn.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Aleem Khan. Camera: Alexander Dynan. Editor: Gareth C. Scales. Music: Chris Roe.
• With: Joanna Scanlan, Nathalie Richard, Talid Ariss, Nasser Memarzia. (English, French, Urdu, Arabic dialogue)

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After Love review: one of the standout films of the year so far

By Leaf Arbuthnot

How to rebuild after love? How to decide who to become, following a loss so fundamental that all coordinates seem thrown in the air? These and other difficult questions are explored in Aleen Khan’s magnificent first film, set between Dover and Calais. Joanna Scanlan, best known as the hopeless press officer Terri Coverley in The Thick of It , plays Mary, a white woman who falls in love at 14 with a Pakistani-born schoolfriend. Years later, she converts to Islam for Ahmed, learns Urdu and begins wearing a veil: acts of devotion to a man she has elected to sacrifice everything for. But at the start of the film, Ahmed dies, leaving Mary at sea, almost literally: she and Ahmed built their life together in a comfortable house by the cliffs of Dover, which threaten to crumble to chalk at any moment.

At first it seems the film will be a fairly conventional examination of life after loss, as the title promises. But soon Mary unearths something shattering as she is sorting through the rubble of Ahmed’s belongings: texts on his phone from a woman he clearly loved. An ID card bearing an address in France sends her across the Channel to confront her late husband’s alluring mistress, Genevieve (Natalie Richard). But in Calais, on a street as sunny as Dover is dour, the confrontation between the two ‘other’ women scatters into an exchange that's less easily categorised. Genevieve assumes in a cheerfully prejudiced way that this headscarfed woman is her latest cleaner, so she invites her into the house, and Mary, being British and grief-stricken, cannot bring herself to clarify the situation. Gradually, they become one another’s confidantes, and the film becomes almost unbearable: it’s clear that the misunderstanding underpinning the women’s relationship will have to untangle, but when?

By Harriet Johnston

By Isaac Bickerstaff

The film isn’t so much a study of what happens after love, but an invitation to consider the different kinds of love that can flower in the unlikeliest places. Mary and Genevieve seem opposites - Mary is self-effacing, squidgily maternal, while Genevieve is looser and more fiery - but really the two women are alike: both have made swingeing compromises for love. While the bones of the plot are conventional - triangulated love, microscoped yet again - the quality of the filmmaking and the subtlety of the screenplay stop it from slackening to soap opera. Scanlan is mesmerising as a meek but dangerous woman who has been ‘humiliated’, she accuses the woman who cuckolded her, multiple times. While Ahmed might have been more thoughtfully fleshed out - photos and family videos never quite nail the character - the story is really about kinship and the extraordinary resilience that can draw women together and hold them fast.

FIVE STARS After Love is released on 4 June in cinemas.

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‘after love’ review: joanna scanlan shines as a grieving widow in a sensitive debut feature.

Aleem Khan's British-French drama is taking its North American bow in limited release.

By Leslie Felperin

Leslie Felperin

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An opening scene — unfurled in one long-held, static, elegantly framed shot — looks on as Fatima (Scanlan) returns home to her house in Dover, on the coast of England, after an evening out with her ferry captain husband, Ahmed (Nasser Memarzia, seen only in this sequence, although his voice echoes through the film). She is clearly ethnically white, but Fatima is clad in a headscarf and the shalwar kameez ensemble that’s traditional among Pakistani women, and she chats with Ahmed in a mix of English and Urdu. When their conversation between rooms comes to an abrupt halt, she goes to investigate why he’s stopped talking, and the ensuing silence is held for a beat long enough to suggest the worst has happened. A cut transfers us to a different room in the house, sometime later, where a tear-free Fatima sits stoically in funereal white, surrounded by wailing relatives.

Taking a ferry on the same line her husband worked for, Fatima sails across the English Channel to Calais and tracks down Genevieve, a svelte blond whose physicality differs significantly from Fatima’s shape. When Genevieve immediately assumes that Fatima is the cleaner she booked from an agency to help her get her house in order before she moves, Fatima goes along with this mistake instead of correcting it. Introducing herself as Mary (her original name before she converted), she uses the mix-up as an opportunity to learn about the woman Ahmed had been seeing secretly for years.

Further surprises are in store when Fatima/Mary learns that Genevieve and Ahmed have a son, a teenager named Solomon (Talid Ariss) whose raging hormones and anger at his missing father have been redirected toward his mother, who doesn’t realize Ahmed is dead or that he had a wife in England. It turns out Genevieve always knew Ahmed was married to someone named Fatima, but she thought her rival was Pakistani, and of course she has no idea that he’s died.

The film’s endgame is perhaps a little too tidy but remains satisfying all the same, thanks in part to the finely harmonized performances between the three leads and the neatness of Khan’s writing, which finds a way to allow Ahmed to literally add his voice, via recorded messages. Chris Roe’s aching, plaintive score extends the film’s emotional palette without swamping it in syrup, while the lensing by DP Alexander Dynan adds a welcome warmth even when the characters are in the darkest, coldest of places.

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Culture | Film

After Love film review: A brilliant debut feature anchored by Joanna Scanlan’s stunning turn

Dover housewife Mary Hussain (an excellent Joanna Scanlan) is a practising Muslim . She converted as a young woman, when she married her Pakistani sweetheart. Her faith - in her marriage at least - is tested, however, when her husband dies.

Turns out Ahmed (the hauntingly avuncular Nasser Memarzia, heard and seen on VHS home-movies and cassette tapes) had another family. Whenever he could, he joined his French mistress Genevieve (Nathalie Richard) and their teenage son Solomon (Talid Ariss), in their secular Calais home. Mary crosses the channel, only to be mistaken by the frazzled Genevieve for a cleaning woman and given the keys to the house. Genevieve and Solomon don’t know Ahmed is dead. What will Mary do with her new-found power?

This inventive domestic drama investigates a supposedly good marriage and is therefore bound to be compared to Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years. I prefer to see it as the flip-side of Rose Glass ’s horror masterpiece, Saint Maud . In fact, if you were looking to compare and contrast non-judge-y takes on pious proles, After Love and Saint Maud would make a fabulous double bill.

In both films, a convert labours dutifully in the house of a patronising infidel, but eventually refuses to know her place and delivers a slap that changes everything. Mary is gentle and generous. She’s also insidiously helpful. It’s part of the genius of Scanlan’s performance that we understand why Genevieve, towards the end of the movie, looks at Mary and yells, “You sick f***ing woman!”

Playing Charles Dickens’ wife Catherine in The Invisible Woman, Scanlan, 59, was so ferociously sad she made Ralph Fiennes’ Dickens look like a popinjay, while her turn as a gauche mum in Pin Cushion left no stone of vulnerability unturned. Leading the cast here, Scanlan blindsides us again. But all the acting is superb and the dialogue, from first-time feature director/writer Aleem Khan (born and raised in Kent), is full of lovely and organic little shocks.

True, there are a few clumsy moments. One metaphor is especially obvious. And, given how rare it is to see British films about brown-skinned Muslims, it may rankle with some viewers that a story involving Islam effectively functions as a showcase for a white actor.

Yet, from the minute Mary arrives in France, all of Khan’s decisions pay off. After Love understands what it means to be an odd fish. There’s something about Mary. There really is.

Cert 12A, 89mins. In cinemas from June 4

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After Love grieves for a house divided by the English Channel

Love and loss surface in Dover and Calais in Aleem Khan’s feature debut, a sympathetic portrait of a widow left reeling by discovery of her husband’s secret life.

2 June 2021

By  Pamela Hutchinson

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► Af ter Love is in cinemas.

Aleem Khan’s debut feature After Love scrutinises bereavement as a mental health disorder, diving into not just the sorrow but the derangement of grief. As newly widowed Mary, Joanna Scanlan offers a portrait of a woman whose cracked heart wins our sympathy, as she absentmindedly makes tea for two in a hotel room or bursts into tears on her prayer mat, and whose increasingly stealthy behaviour commands our attention as she infiltrates another’s woman’s life. She’s compellingly broken. In Scanlan’s features we see grief and humiliation twisted into possessiveness, vengefulness and misplaced compassion, as she plays simultaneously the wronged wife and a cuckoo in somebody else’s nest.

Mary and her ferry-captain husband Ahmed are leading the peaceful life of a middle-aged Muslim couple in Dover, supported by a shared faith and a community, when he dies suddenly. Emptying his wallet after the funeral, Mary finds an ID card belonging to a French woman, Genevieve, and then loving messages on his phone from ‘G’. It’s a soap opera set-up, but in the hands of writer-director Khan, After Love becomes something weightier.

Not just bereaved but betrayed, Mary senses that her world is crumbling – Khan literalises this with discreet special effects: the white cliffs of Dover seem to crash into the English Channel, a ceiling cracks open. These are visions, but in the next scene Mary brushes dust from her shoulder.

Those cliffs, which feature prominently in the film as the spot where Mary would watch for Ahmed’s return and now waits for something else, take a place in a lineage of stories about mourning women waiting for their men to return from the sea. Much here feels as robust and longstanding as those cliffs. Even scenes played out via SMS have their heft – in this film, technology is fragile but useful, inasmuch as it carries and revives precious memories, from the audio tapes Ahmed posted from Pakistan, to home movies on VHS and the voicemail Mary listens to obsessively.

In the end, it’s a phone that will betray her deceit, but a granite headstone in the soil that reveals her real secret. Mary and Ahmed’s marriage was decades long, and his affair with Genevieve was no fling. Mary and Ahmed began their relationship as teenagers, in secrecy, in the face of cultural prejudice, and that story is about to play out again in the next generation. There is history here, and loss (a dead child, an absent father, an estranged family), as well as a gaping cultural divide.

Mary dresses modestly and wears a headscarf – she converted to Islam to be with Ahmed. She also speaks Urdu and cooks Pakistani food. Genevieve (Nathalie Richard) does none of those things. She is also a modern single working mother, and wears trousers and ruffled, highlighted hair. When we first see her it’s a shock, but she’s the one who judges by appearances. Mary is poised on her doorstep to confront her over the affair, but Genevieve flexes her own prejudice and takes her for a house cleaner.

When Mary accepts the offer to enter Genevieve’s home under these false pretences, the film grows an outer skin of intrigue. Later, when Genevieve, unaware of her cleaner’s real identity, gestures at her scarf and asks about her faith, Mary’s response is poisonous: “I did something for my husband that no one else could.” Unknowingly, the women have fallen into complementary roles – complementarily subservient to Ahmed’s needs, that is. There’s a shadow of Mary’s logic in Genevieve’s later statement: “Being with me has made him into a better husband for someone else.”

Richard and Talid Ariss, who plays Genevieve’s son Solomon, lend Scanlan impeccable support in roles that call for more thundering histrionics. However, this is Scanlan’s film, and her performance is disarmingly sophisticated. Although she is perhaps known mostly for television comedy, her best roles involve a virtuoso mix of tones, from her exasperated civil servant in Armando Iannucci’s political satire The Thick of It (2005-12) to her put-upon ward sister in BBC4 ’s geriatric ward-set Getting On (2009-12).

In this film, as in, say, Deborah Haywood’s Pin Cushion (2017), Scanlan again fully inhabits a complex role. It takes an actress of a high calibre to express so much, and there’s a tangible pleasure to be taken in observing her performance. Much of her best acting is done alone, halting in the middle of her prayers, reconstructing her identity as she rehearses a speech in the mirror, breathing in her husband’s scent on another woman’s laundry or laying down in the shallows on Calais beach and allowing the tides to mingle with her tears.

Khan’s filmmaking is as fastidious and as deceptively restrained as his heroine. Ahmed dies in the background of a long shot, and the slow zoom in towards his body is mirrored by a subsequent shot of the funeral gathering. The film is balanced in time and place too, bookended by two baptisms and taking place in towns that echo each other in location and industry. The physical gulf that separates the women is a body of water that has two names in two languages, much like Mary, whose Muslim name is Fahima, and Ahmed, whom she calls Ed.

Khan and DP Alexander Dynan (who worked on Paul Schrader’s similarly austere and grief-stricken First Reformed , 2017) frequently return to the cliff edge, the chilly waters, to stress this divide. There’s a sense of liminality, with both woman existing on the verge of something whole – sharing scraps of a home, a husband and a father.

Chris Roe’s score appears intermittently throughout the film but when it vanishes, perhaps Khan intends us to feel its absence, a reflection of the emptiness created by secrets and affections withheld, confessions left unmade. The music swells to suggest a harmonious future at the film’s end, but is swiftly replaced by the sound of waves crashing and gulls squawking as the credits roll. Ahmed and his mysterious motivations are lost in the deep, while above ground two women look for a new kind of home.

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2020, Drama, 1h 29m

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After Love marks an impressively nuanced feature debut for writer-director Aleem Khan -- and a brilliant showcase for Joanna Scanlan's dramatic chops. Read critic reviews

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After love videos, after love   photos.

Set in the port town of Dover, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.

Genre: Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Aleem Khan

Producer: Matthieu de Braconier

Writer: Aleem Khan

Release Date (Theaters): Jan 20, 2023  limited

Release Date (Streaming): Feb 24, 2023

Runtime: 1h 29m

Distributor: Vertigo Releasing / Ahoy Associates Entertainment

Production Co: The Bureau, British Film Institute, BBC Films

Cast & Crew

Joanna Scanlan

Mary Hussain

Nathalie Richard

Talid Ariss

Nasser Memarzia

Sudha Bhuchar

Nisha Chadha

Jabeen Butt

Subika Anwar-Khan

Elijah Braik

Screenwriter

Matthieu de Braconier

Vincent Gadelle

Executive Producer

Rose Garnett

Natascha Wharton

Alexander Dynan

Cinematographer

Gareth C. Scales

Film Editing

Original Music

Sarah Jenneson

Production Design

Shaheen Baig

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After Love (2021) Review

04 Jun 2021

After Love (2021)

In outline, After Love has all the hallmarks of a potential Channel 5 soap: mixed marriages, withholding secrets, shocking revelations and a death in the first five minutes. But in débutant writer-director Aleem Khan’s hands, it’s a sensitive — sometimes subtle, sometimes not — look into bereavement, private lives and cultural divides, all brought to life by a stunning performance by Joanna Scanlan working at the peak of her powers.

Scanlan is Mary/Fahima, a British Muslim convert, happily married to Ahmed (Nasser Memarzia). In a pre-credit sequence, Khan economically sketches a happy marriage in microcosm, Mary making a cup of tea, preparing dinner and gently smiling to herself as her husband fails to hit the high note of a Bollywood song. The domestic scene is shattered by Mary finding Ahmed dead in his armchair, the shock enhanced by the sound seeping out to silence. After the funeral, Mary goes through his belongings and discovers, via a French woman’s identification card and a string of texts from someone named ‘G’, her husband led a secret life. Rather than remain in the dark, she travels to Calais and finds herself at the door of her husband’s lover, Genevieve (Nathalie Richard).

A nuanced depiction of loss.

What happens next is typical of Khan’s unpredictable but restrained storytelling. Eschewing the obvious slanging match, Mary, by sheer dint of wearing a veil, is mistaken by Genevieve as her cleaner and, rather than ’fess up, the former starts working for her to feel closer to Ahmed and to get a sense of the woman with whom he shared his life. As much as it is a story about a deceived woman, Khan also plays with ideas of cultural assimilation in both quiet (none of Mary’s own family are present at Ahmed’s funeral to support her) and more arresting ways: a stunning image of Mary in her Muslim attire atop the collapsing white cliffs of Dover (a monument to British values), the crumbling chalk face mirroring her eroding sense of self, perfectly captures the sense of being caught between two worlds.

Scanlan, who has done outstanding work on television ( Getting On , No Offence ) but never really had the chance to shine on the big screen, perfectly plays a woman whose unfathomable loss is now compounded by the revelation that many of the years she spent with her husband were a sham. She shares strong scenes with Richard, trying to draw out information about Genevieve and Ahmed’s life together, but is perhaps best when she is left alone to etch Mary’s pain. From practising her introductions to Genevieve in the mirror to falling into the sea and letting the waves crash over her, from looking at herself naked in the mirror, tracing her flab and stretch marks with her finger to collapsing in grief on the floor in her nothing-y hotel room, it’s a nuanced depiction of loss that is at once difficult to watch yet impossible to look away from.

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, love after love.

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We all know what the Hallmark Movie Channel version of this story looks like. A middle-aged woman with two grown sons lovingly cares for her husband in his last days and mourns his loss. Then, after a couple of awkward, conflicted attempts, she begins to open her heart to a new romance, and we all have our hearts warmed by the resilience of the human spirit and the reassuring notion that there is love after loss. We know what the Lifetime version would look like, too. A beautiful, plucky widow finds that her adult sons pose a threat to her chance to find new love. 

Both versions of that story are TV-movie perennials. But “Love After Love” is different. This first-time feature from writer/director Russell Harbaugh has an understated, intimate, pointillist style, with a cool jazz score that matches its improvisational tone. The structure is offbeat in the most literal sense, showing us the small moments in between the usual movie scenes and trusting us to understand their significance without explanations. Most movies go for clarity by heightening the drama, with one emotion on screen at a time as though delivered by semaphore. In this movie, things are always a little messy, a bit smudged around the edges. Like life.

We first see Suzanne (a radiant Andie MacDowell ), perched on a window seat, talking to her son Nicholas (Chris O’Dowd) about happiness. She tells him that her sons make her happy, and cheekily adds, “and your dad’s pretty good in bed, too.” Then they go outdoors to join one of several gatherings of friends and family we will see throughout the film.

Suzanne’s husband gets up to recite a poem. His raspy voice and the cigarette in his hand hint that he will not be around long, and by the next scene he is in bed, close to unconscious, with a harrowing extended death rattle. Suzanne cares for him devotedly. Nicholas and her other son, Chris ( James Adomian ), are there to help but both are a bit lost. “He doesn’t want us here—this is embarrassing,” one of them says, as they help their father to the bathroom.

And then he is gone. After the heart-wrenching sound of his labored breathing, the clanking of the gurney is unbearably mundane and mechanical as they take him away.

We then get a series of glimpses, mostly moments that seem insignificant, at least to the characters, as they try to manage their grief. Chris gets drunk at another family gathering and he talks about losing his dad in a stand-up routine. Nicholas tries to lose himself through women, breaking up with one, getting engaged to another, making an oafish play for a third and trying to reconnect with a fourth. Suzanne snaps at one of her colleagues, than apologizes, laughing a little because she knows it is about her feeling out of control.

And then there is another gathering, back at Suzanne’s home, with two new people at the table. Nicholas makes a toast, poorly disguising his hostility. “To Michael and to this special thing that’s happening right before our eyes even though we’re desperately trying not to notice it is, and I think that it’s right that we try to celebrate that.” The newcomer responds with more grace. “I thank you for welcoming me here, however you have, it can’t have been easy.”

It isn’t easy, and it quickly gets even harder. As miserable as grief is, it somehow feels safer than letting it go. Chris admits. “It’s almost worse how easy it is to get over grief.”

MacDowell is a wonder here, her exquisite face utterly open to all of Suzanne’s experiences and emotions. Suzanne understands that she can love her sons without always respecting their choices, and she can care about their happiness without giving up what she wants just to demonstrate what they think is the right way to grieve. And we understand that the gift of the film is seeing MacDowell give Suzanne and her story the grace and depth they deserve.

Nell Minow is the Contributing Editor at RogerEbert.com.

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Love After Love (2018)

Andie MacDowell as Suzanne

Chris O'Dowd as Nicholas

Francesca Faridany as Karen

James Adomian as Chris

Seth Barrish as Scott

• Russell Harbaugh
• Eric Mendelsohn

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• Chris Teague
• Matthew C. Hart
• John Magary
• David Shire

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Summary Set in the port town of Dover, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.

Directed By : Aleem Khan

Written By : Aleem Khan

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After We Fell review – Harry Styles-inspired romance is stupendously wooden

Fans of the YA After series should find something amid the tangled mess of plot, daytime-soap acting and inanimate passion – everyone else should look away

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If you don’t identify as an Afternator or recognise the hashtag #Hessa, a short explanation is necessary. After is a clutch of bestselling YA romance novels once described as “Fifty Shades of Grey for teens”. US author Anna Todd started writing stories as fan fiction for the boyband One Direction and Harry Styles is the inspiration for broody-eyed bad-boy Hardin Scott; he’s the on-off boyfriend of bookish virginal college student Tessa Young. This film is the stupendously wooden and humourless third in the series. It’s heading straight to Amazon and should come with a warning to viewers: contains extremely boring sex.

If you’re new to the franchise, don’t even bother trying. The script works on the basis that everyone watching has read the books, seen the previous movies and bought the T-shirt (sloganned versions available on Etsy: “Mentally dating Hardin Scott”). No attempt whatsoever is made to introduce us to the tedious tangle of relationships. That said, all you need to know about Tessa and Hardin is that they can’t live without each other.

The latest crisis is whether Tessa moving to Seattle to work for a swanky publishing company will destroy their relationship. Josephine Langford is dewy-skinned Tessa, who spends the film smiling a bland people-pleasing smile. Hardin is played by British actor Hero Fiennes Tiffin, the son of director Martha and nephew of Ralph and Joseph. (My burning question is whether any of the other Fiennes have ever watched these movies? We need a Gogglebox episode of a family screening.)

The acting is daytime-soap standard and the tasteful, softcore sex is shot in such a way as to not look like actual sex. It’s unerotic, unsweaty and performed with expressionless faces. It feels like the film-makers know they have to do the sex bits, but don’t really want to actually do them. In one scene Hardin turns up the bubbles on a hot tub with a suggestive eyebrow waggle. “Oooh, that’s nice,” coos Tessa, as if he’s just passed her the custard creams.

• After We Fell is released on 22 October on Amazon Prime Video.

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Set in the port town of Dover, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-on... Read all Set in the port town of Dover, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais. Set in the port town of Dover, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.

• Joanna Scanlan
• Nathalie Richard
• Talid Ariss
• 31 User reviews
• 58 Critic reviews
• 81 Metascore
• 13 wins & 16 nominations total

• (as David Hecter)
• Removal man

• Young Ahmed

• Family Member
• (uncredited)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia The film get the 2020 Cannes Critics' Week official label selection. Critics' Week was canceled along with all other Cannes festival strands due to the coronavirus.

Geneviève : I convinced myself... I was fine with sharing... because I always thought that I had the better half of him.

• Soundtracks Kabhi Kabhi Mere Dil Mein (Duet) Written by Khayyam and Sahir Ludhianvi Performed by Mukesh and Lata Mangeshkar Courtesy of Saregama PLC. By arrangement with A&G Sync

User reviews 31

• Aug 26, 2021
• How long is After Love? Powered by Alexa
• June 4, 2021 (United Kingdom)
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• Tình Yêu Còn Lại
• Kingsdown, Dover, Kent, England, UK (Mary and Ahmed's home, private residence)
• British Film Institute (BFI)
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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• Runtime 1 hour 29 minutes

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Intimate drama has language, infidelity, partial nudity.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Encourages empathy toward others, rather than look

Mary is shown to be kind and thoughtful, particula

Main character Mary and many supporting characters

A character dies suddenly just out of shot, portra

A character is seen in their underwear in front of

Occasional language includes "f--k," "f---ing," "b

Main characters smoke cigarettes on occasion. Alco

Parents need to know that After Love is an award-winning intimate British drama with occasional strong language, some nudity, and themes around adultery. The movie stars Joanna Scanlan -- who won a BAFTA for Best Actress -- as Mary, a woman who discovers her late husband had a secret life. The death of Mary's…

Positive Messages

Encourages empathy toward others, rather than looking at situations from a binary perspective and making snap judgments. Honesty can bring people closer, even when it is difficult to hear. Courage is shown when seeking the truth. Infidelity and lying -- and the consequences of both -- are prominent.

Positive Role Models

Mary is shown to be kind and thoughtful, particularly in dealing with her late husband's son, though she loses her temper, slaps him on one occasion. She maintains a lie about her identity in order to snoop around Genevieve's home and is initially judgmental of her behavior. Genevieve makes assumptions about Mary based on her appearance, mistaking her for a cleaner. She lies to her son about aspects of her relationship with his father, but does so in order to protect him. Both women manage to overcome their anger to see each other as humans experiencing their own pain.

Diverse Representations

Main character Mary and many supporting characters are Muslim. Prayers and religious gatherings are shown, and Muslim community is portrayed as supportive, though Mary is often on the outskirts as the only White woman (she converted for her marriage). Her husband's family are of Pakistani descent. A White character asks how it feels "taking all that on," referring to Mary's conversion as though she presumes it to be a burden or sacrifice. Her husband's teenage son is in a same-sex relationship, which is shown positively as sweet and kind -- though a secret from his mother -- and Mary's reaction is accepting when she finds out. Mary has a larger body shape that she explores on-screen in the mirror after meeting her late husband's slimmer girlfriend. It is never referenced by others negatively.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

A character dies suddenly just out of shot, portrayed through their spouse's reaction. Mourning gatherings are shown and visits to a graveyard. A character lies down on a beach with waves lapping and, at one point, submerging them. An adult slaps a teen for spitting in another's face.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A character is seen in their underwear in front of a mirror. Later they are seen in the bath naked from the waist up -- breast partially seen from side. Character also seen in the shower, though through glass doors that obscure the body. Two teens are heard kissing off-screen, then seen shirtless kissing on a bed. Frequent reference to infidelity.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional language includes "f--k," "f---ing," "bitch," "bastard," "crap," and "pr--k."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Main characters smoke cigarettes on occasion. Alcohol is consumed in small amounts, including a teen drinking wine with dinner in France, where the law allows drinking from the age of 16 in a family setting.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that After Love is an award-winning intimate British drama with occasional strong language, some nudity, and themes around adultery. The movie stars Joanna Scanlan -- who won a BAFTA for Best Actress -- as Mary, a woman who discovers her late husband had a secret life. The death of Mary's husband, Ahmed ( Nasser Memarzia ), is seen just out of shot, and there are scenes of mourning ceremonies and graveyard visits. Dialogue is in English as well as Urdu, Arabic, and French with English subtitles. Mary is Muslim, having converted to the faith following her marriage. The supporting cast are also primarily Muslim, with religious gatherings and prayer depicted. There is partial nudity, kissing on a bed, and frequent reference to infidelity. Occasional strong language includes "f--k" and "bitch." Characters are also shown to smoke cigarettes and drink small quantities of alcohol -- including a teen in a family setting. The film deals with complex and upsetting adult issues, which may be confusing or too intense for younger viewers. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 1 parent review

After Love – Overly Extended With Suss Scenes

What's the story.

In AFTER LOVE, Mary ( Joanna Scanlan ) discovers that her recently deceased husband, Ahmed ( Nasser Memarzia ), had a secret life. She sets off from Dover to Calais in search of the truth. There she meets Genevieve (Nathalie Richard) and her son, Solomon (Talid Ariss), who lead her to question everything she knew about her marriage and her own identity in turn.

Is It Any Good?

Writer-director Aleem Khan's debut feature film is a confidently handled and highly original drama that rightly earned him three BAFTA nominations. After Love 's lead actor, however, went one better, with Scanlan winning the Best Actress award for her portrayal of Mary. Scanlan, best known for her characters in British comedy dramas such as The Thick of It , gives a mesmerizing performance from start to finish as a woman whose world falls apart around her after the sudden death of her husband. Khan's assured direction allows for a stillness and silence that makes space for the actor to really hold the screen. Every breath and flick of the eye is saturated with emotion, building up a tension that almost surpasses the plot altogether.

Moments of rawness and connection take on symbolic beauty, such as Mary partly submerged beneath the lapping tide on the beach, letting both the water and her feelings wash over her; the two "wronged" women lying next to each other on a bed, mirroring two sides of an experience; or characters looking over a cliff's edge, contemplating the future. It's beautiful, impactful stuff that makes Khan one to watch closely over the coming years and will hopefully lead to broader opportunities for Scanlan to explore her remarkable talent.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the theme of identity in After Love . How did various revelations cause characters to reconsider their understandings of others as well as themselves?

How was Islam portrayed in the movie? What did the film show of Mary's experience of her religion? Why is representation in media important?

How did the characters' development of empathy toward each other help them move forward with their own grief and pain? Can you think of a time when you've shown empathy toward someone or something?

Talk about the strong language in the film. Did it seem necessary, or excessive? What did it contribute to the movie?

Movie Details

• In theaters : January 20, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : February 24, 2023
• Cast : Joanna Scanlan , Nathalie Richard , Talid Ariss
• Director : Aleem Khan
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : British Film Institute
• Genre : Drama
• Character Strengths : Courage , Empathy
• Run time : 89 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Award : BAFTA
• Last updated : February 25, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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‘Love After Love’ Review: Elegance Without a Center

Ann Hui’s World War II-era film is lovely to look at but lacks emotional depth and resonance.

By Claire Shaffer

Early on in “Love After Love,” the director Ann Hui introduces the viewer to an astonishing shade of green, an emerald lushness that radiates from the foliage surrounding a Hong Kong mansion on the eve of World War II. If only the rest of the overlong feature were so memorable.

“Love After Love” is Hui’s 30th film, and an adaptation of a short story by the novelist Eileen Chang, whose fiction she has now used in three films. Hui, who rose to prominence as a director of the Hong Kong New Wave in the 1980s, has been less well-known in the West.

This film is a sufficient showcase for Hui’s craftsmanship, but it lacks the emotional depth or resonance that its composed visuals, lofty setting, and melodramatic stakes would portend.

The film, streaming now on Mubi, shows sympathy for its young protagonist Ge Weilong (Sandra Ma), who comes from Shanghai to live and work for her cold, aristocratic Aunt Liang (Faye Yu) in Hong Kong while pursuing an education. Attending the banquets and high-society functions of Hong Kong’s international upper class, her aunt’s social circle, Weilong unwittingly finds herself under the gaze of George (Eddie Peng), a former lover of her aunt’s with an outsize Don Juan persona.

What could make for a captivating story involving a transgressive love triangle is, even on a micro level, ineffective. Interactions between characters feel hollow, no matter how well-lit or well-cast the scenes are, with a passionless non-ending that has little of substance to say about the period or its social morés. Nevertheless, the bright spots in “Love After Love” may encourage viewers to seek out more robust works in Hui’s cherished oeuvre.

Love After Love Not rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 24 minutes. Watch on Mubi.

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Bleeding Love review – Ewan McGregor and daughter Clara are toe-curlingly terrible in rehab flick

A landscape gardener and his estranged daughter go on a therapeutic road trip to battle substance abuse in this unbearably cute nepo vanity project

Ewan McGregor co-stars with his daughter Clara McGregor in this avowedly personal story of a guy going on a road trip with his estranged 20-year-old daughter from his first marriage, dealing with trust and intimacy issues, and their own previous battles with substance abuse. In theory, it should be possible to do a film like this without it being a complete toe-curling nepo vanity project. I, for example, very much enjoyed Flag Day , the film Sean Penn made with his daughter Dylan. But this unbearably cute joint selfie of a movie is gruesomely indulgent and entitled from the first; it allows Ewan McGregor little or no opportunity to show his natural wit and flair and there is oddly no real chemistry between him and his co-star.

Ewan plays a guy who is supposedly a “landscape gardener” (he is announced as such with his firm’s details on the side of his truck, as opposed to “movie star and dad”). He has just helped his daughter recover from an overdose and now they’re making this therapeutic journey, although he hasn’t been entirely candid about where they’re heading. She keeps getting out of the truck to pee and, the first time, takes the opportunity to take off running across the desert, with her dad in pursuit. Where on earth did she think she was going, asks Ewan exasperatedly.

Where indeed? But it’s no sillier or more contrived than anything else in the film. We keep getting truly terrible “flashback” sequences in which Ewan is the adoring daddy to Clara when she was a little kid, and when he finally has to walk out on her (for his new relationship) he gives her a supersad-face-emoji expression as he leaves. It is a tiny moment of saturated awfulness that epitomises the entire film.

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