'After Love' review: Joanna Scanlan shines in this melodramatic posthumous love triangle

Mary (Joanna Scanlan) loved her Pakistani husband so much that she converted to Islam for him and spent her life wearing a headscarf while living a quiet life in the English countryside. Genevieve was so in love with a married man that she had a decades-long affair with him while raising her illegitimate child. When Mary's husband dies and Genevieve begins to suspect that her lover will not return, they are drawn to the shared experience of grieving the person you gave your life to - and the fact that they are all two hung the same guy.

Aleem Khan's feature debut is a slow, meticulous examination of the role devotion plays in our lives and the gaping void that can be left when you lose the basket with all your eggs in it. It's a flawed little movie about the flawed little relationships life often throws us into at our lowest points and a reminder of how certain types of people can continue to affect us long after they're buried.

When Mary's husband Ahmed dies, her world instantly empties. After decades of being a homemaker and a devout Muslim convert, she lost the driving force behind her every move for 30 years. But the memories of the person she was before him are so distant that she can't go back to anything resembling her old life. Left with no purpose or sense of independence, she begins to rummage through her late husband's belongings. She quickly finds disturbing clues suggesting that her husband was more than he seemed.

She is particularly concerned about a photo of a Frenchwoman in Ahmed's wallet, and soon crosses the English Channel to visit her husband's mistress in Calais. There is no confrontation plan; she simply feels a cosmic urge to explore any information she can find about the man she loved. So she chooses to pose as a maid, doing chores as an excuse to spend time with Geneviève and Salomon (Talid Ariss), her husband's teenage son.

Her process of integrating into the family is slow, and the job of housemaid is the perfect cover for a woman who has spent most of her adult life trying to make herself invisible. Much of the film's beauty comes from the fact that Mary gradually learns to behave like an independent human again, even if she's only taking baby steps. She becomes a presence in Genevieve and Solomon's lives, but the nature of how they met - and the awful realities of how their lives intersected - make a conventional happy ending impossible. These people may be the only family-like thing everyone has left, but they didn't ask to be reunited.

The three living characters in 'After Love' - and the dead one, who might have the greatest presence of all - are like jigsaw puzzle pieces that come awfully close to fitting together but never quite work out . The film feeds on the dramatic tension created by people who shared a lover without sharing any value. Mary has done her best to live a traditional life and has few regrets for her decisions, but Genevieve's cosmopolitan lifestyle is completely alien to her. Geneviève's love of French fashion, wine and extramarital affairs makes her a figurehead for her home country. At one point, she utters what might be the most French sentence ever written: "I know that being with me makes him a better husband for someone else."

While the plot may seem melodramatic on paper, "After Love" finds its true power in the void created by the things it chooses to exclude. It's the story of a love triangle with one of its three points missing, and no one has the ability to complete the shape or the wisdom to walk away from it. And no matter how hard we try, the audience's attempts to find easy answers about these people end up being as futile as the introspection of the characters.

Ahmed was a womanizer with a second family, but he still provided Mary with just about every happy memory she has. Even with the truth revealed, she is unwilling to give them up. And Genevieve may have had an affair with a married man, but her deep desire for a traditional family life is as heartfelt as it is ironic. Anchored by a nuanced twist from Scanlan that can latch onto some of Italy's best neorealist performances, the film ends with a beautiful, jagged exploration of the messy nature of human beings.

BFI Distribution will release “After Love” in select theaters on Friday, January 20.

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