'The Waiting Room'

By Julie Griffin

After a long, cold lonely winter, Anna meets the man of her dreams. On a train headed for nowhere in particular, that Anna loves to make gentle conversation with strangers pays off at the train station. Shortly, after befriending an elderly man, a younger man comes to pick him up. And it is love at first sight for he and Anna. Steven, who has a more difficult time understanding love begins to experience some slight irritability and confusion. But carries on with his life as usual. Living together with a girlfriend he is unhappy with, she refuses to let him have peace when he works long hours or any overtime. She begins to notice his discomfort and knows that something is not right.

Steven reads to an elderly woman named Helen who he cares for as a mother. So very attached to her, he reads to her from a seemingly ancient paperback book she and her sister read to eachother as children. The book of course, a classic love story, and with the elderly Roger a charge in Steven's care at the nursing home, Anna believes the mystery man she falls in love with upon first sight at the train station, the son of the man. Roger enjoys talking about his wife and giving relationship advice to Anna. He tells the stories of his younger years romance and otherwise to Steven as well, but not ever the two together at the same time. The elusive presence of Steven seems a mystery to Anna.

A very realistic acting scene for Anne Marie-Duff comes out early on. She falls apart and cries in her home after putting her child to bed preceding meeting the man for whom she falls in love with at first sight. The likely realization of her very real life though at this moment, she knows falls short of perfection. He ex-husband, a difficult man, she wants what she does not yet realize. She does want a good relationship with a man that leads to marriage. She soon ends her friendship relationship with a friend named George whose child plays together with her child at the playground. But when George invites her to dinner with his family, Anna unable to hold back her feelings for the new mystery man gushes forth as a fresh spring. She tells them she feels like a teenager again. And yet the two who only shared some conversation about Roger and slight glances both fall in love at first sight.

At the dinner table of friends who bring a single man to meet with Anna, she spills over with the story of the mystery man instead. "He's lovely," explains Anna, unable to explain how special just a few moments near him. Anna feels like a teenager again. And one of her female friends at the dinner table tells Anna that what she experienced is not impossible. In contrast later that evening, after Anna explains to her ex-husband her need for support, she falls apart. Coming undone, Anna sobs like a child, and then she sobs vehemently. She like the elder woman Steven cares for at the nursing home, know that there is something better in life. The women, both with full lives, Helen who has already lived all of hers, and Anna standing on the edge of a new beginning.

One of the most important scenes of the film demonstrates love and chemistry as a very important part of love. Steven as well goes home from work that night and does something strange to his nature. He dances and fantasizes that he is choreographing a dance in his living room mirror with Anna. Anna at home reads a bedtime story to her child. And the two people are feeling that kind of thing that two people feel when they are in love. Steven in the process of trying to find out who or where Anna is even remarks about his ridiculous and unexplainable behavior after he drives his bike into a truck while going to the train station to try to find Anna. And so the film ending actually seems to mark the beginning. Anna gets on a train heading to the station where she first saw and met Steven. Steven, already there as Anna arivves, the timing succinct. And the elder man, Roger places the hands of the two lovers together, blessing them as sealed up inside of all of the stories he shared with them separately about wisdom and love.

The more aesthetic theme of the 2007 romance British genre romance film, surrounds the theme of romantic love that leads to a serious relationship. The film does end up with Anna and Steven coming together to make a happily ever after. A whole host of other films with the same thematic name as The Waiting Room do also exist, and so this is good to know beforehand so that the film is not confused with another title.

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