Natalie Portman delivers an astonishing character study as Emilia Greenleaf a woman who has, in her own words, broken one marriage, and seems unable to stop herself breaking her own following the death of her three day old baby. We see her demise through her relationships with William (Tahan), her husband Jack (Cohen), and his first wife Carolyn (Kudrow). When Portman is on screen with William the film seems to move in a believable direction and yet with Jack and with Carolyn, alone or together something seems not quite as understandably real.

At first I wanted to blame a lack of chemistry between Portman and Cohen and yet there are tender moments seemingly nullifying my questions about their relationship. Charlie Tahan is excellent throughout and so I am left with a question mark against the casting of Jack and Carolyn, or, perhaps, the screenplay involving them. Portman's character is simply played out as a determined and privileged young woman who cannot cope with being denied what she really wants and needs above all else - to be seen as the person she thinks she is and not the woman she really is. Her defensiveness is seen in many of the scenes Portman delivers which is why I consider her performance as astonishingly accurate and I just wish the flaws elsewhere could have been better handled.

Although there is a rewarding end to this film, a catharsis if you wish it to be one, it still leaves a feeling that you have watched an unfinished work, one which could and should have delivered so much more from the characters around Emilia. Perhaps, at heart, the film cannot get beyond a feeling of superficiality that surrounds some of the plot, which is a pity because it could have been so much better.

Love And Other Impossible Pursuits (horribly changed to The Other Woman) is based on a best-seller novel of the same name by Ayelet Waldman.

In the movie, Emilia (Natalie Portman) is a young, happy, beautiful and notorious lawyer that falls in love with Jack (Scott Cohen) the man who left his first wife Carolyn (Lisa Kudrow) to marry Emilia and also give himself some new colors in life. Jack and Carolyn have a young boy, William (Charlie Tahan), which have some difficulties to accept Emilia as a new member of the family and is always influenced by his mother's tough thoughts and her lack of respect for Isabel's death, the child Emilia and Jack lost few days after her birth. Carolyn also doesn't accept the fact that her son will not have the paternal presence anymore but in the other hand can't handle Emilia's efforts to conquer William's appreciation because all her tries fails with unintentional careless attitudes.

The movie hides from the audience when, why or how Isabel died till the last moment to intensify dramatic moments and give time to plot developments, which works but some elements in the book aren't clear in the movie. The movie focuses her tough relationship with her stepson forgetting some of her problems about why she hates so much other places and people that surrounds her. Of course that we know that all her angry and hate are related to her loss, but seems like everything is just a result of her depression and not because all that she once loved remember somehow her child or her intense desires to be a perfect mother and wife with the man she loves deeply. And those are the other impossible pursuits the title talks about.

Don Roos is a great director who deals with the short thin line between human losses and the problems that come along with it, expressing human feelings in its real form never desperate to get tears from the audience with lame dramatic situations. His movies are always simple, linear and easy to understand but honest enough to make us considering how complex are human feelings and the relationship between them. That's how he succeeds with titles like his acclaimed breakthrough The Opposite Of Sex (1998) and the less known but equally good Happy Endings (2005). But here seems that things are sometimes superficial enough as an ordinary drama that succeeds but could give us a little more than is given. When everything seems simple enough suddenly he tries hard more than is concerned like the Freud-ish analysis using Oedipus parallels and relationship transferring, adding nothing solid to the plot more than a few minutes plus of some unnecessary composition.

Natalie Portman is great for sure, apathetic and cold as the character is even when sometimes her character's egocentrism and selfishness seems a little exhaustive. The same can be said about the other actors, specially Don Ross' longtime collaborator Lisa Kudrow, that once more gives some comedic situations to relieve some melodramatic sequences but suddenly is able to transform a funny performance into an absolutely emotional and delicate situation. The example of Kudrow's outstanding ability is obvious when she calls Emilia to explain the truth about Isabel's death. That scene is fantastic in its simplistic form and what give us reasons to watch Don Roos movies from the beginning to the end.

A beautiful movie, sometimes corny but effective in its purpose.

is basically what this movie is about. And the film goes out of its way to make the two female character, played by Portman and Kudrow, seem very dislikable. Kudrow is the ex-wife and is just plain ugly at times with what she says and is a control freak. You don't feel sorry for her that her husband left her for a younger woman. Who would want to listen to her carry on at home. Portman, is the younger woman, Emilia, whom steels her boss, Jack, from Kudrow. She gets pregnant, so he decides to divorce and marry her. Their baby dies 3 days after being born. Then there is the stepson, William, whom seems to set Emilia off. She seems very annoyed by him and always does or say the wrong thing. Emilia also has problems with her father and brings that into her marriage. The way everyone is portrayed in the movie makes you wonder how they ever got married in the first place.

FINAL VERDICT: No one is likable in this. Not worth a viewing.