45 Years

English countryside.

Preparations bubble up for Kate and Geoff's 45th wedding anniversary while a letter shatters their tranquility.

Fifty years after the accident, the body of Katia, the man's ex-girlfriend, is found in the ice of the Swiss Alps.

Inevitable is the involvement of Geoff, who seems catapulted back, absorbed in the memories he keeps in the attic.

Kate is also upset, especially when she follows him and when she views some images of the woman.

Five days separate them from the anniversary, which rather than a celebration now seems more like a weight to be lifted to bear the "frost" that has engulfed them.

Geoff tries not to let anything out, and although the bond between the two seems to have been consolidated over the years, the balance is terribly compromised.

Both in their small daily actions and in their dialogues they are bewildered and lost, and between ups and downs, Kate's doubt continually resurfaces.

What kind of love has seen them live their whole lives together?

Mike Leigh has Geoff symbolically read a text by Kierkegaard, the philosopher with the existential drama of choice...: was his choice due or intended?

Kate knows by now that Geoff would have married Katia, and doubt invades her along with the awkwardness of clashing with the complex nature of intimacy and the risk of emotional exposure involved in the relationship especially with respect to the honesty that is required of it and the fears that may arise from it.

The risk, the refusal to feel that she is no longer the object of her sentimental choice, leads her to rethink the very meaning of her life, which seems like a childhood disease mocked by its main toy: love.

The mystery, the unknown dimension has secured this marriage from love and would have been so forever had not an unpredictable factor intervened: nothing can upset a marriage as much as knowledge!

The playlist Kate is about to choose has as its leading track, Smoke in the Eyes of a Blind and Soundless Love.

A work that effectively insinuates doubt about the ability to see one's relational, communicative, intimate experience with oneself and others.

An effective questioning of whether or not we are aware of our lived experience, which fiercely, as in Kate's case, can catapult onto our beliefs, our choices, and our identity.

In life, imagination often triumphs over knowledge, and the only thing man can betray is his conscience.

Silver Bear for best male and female performance.

A chilling finale: the chilling seal to 45 years of life.