45 Years

Andrew Haigh : 2015

Married for 45 years, without children, Kate and Geoff Mercer are poised to celebrate their wedding anniversary with a party, when Geoff receives a letter that shakes both of them. The letter, from Switzerland, informs him of the discovery of the body of Katya, his girlfriend before Kate, who died falling into a fissure in a glacier when the couple were on a walking holiday in 1962. Now, finally, her body has been found, intact, frozen in ice and time. Geoff tells Kate that he was regarded as Katya's next-of-kin, since they had been pretending to be married. Though Kate continues to prepare for the party, and the couple shares some romantic excitement about it, she becomes increasingly disturbed by Geoff's preoccupation with Katya, and with the idea of this woman eternally preserved in youth, in this time before. Geoff reminisces at length about his carefree time with his first love; seeks out photographs of her in the attic; and complains bitterly about the way his contemporaries and ex-colleagues have aged. Under Kate's questioning, he states that he would have married Katya had she lived. While Geoff is at a work lunch, Kate searches the attic and finds slides of Katya, which reveal that she was pregnant at the time of her death. As the celebrations grow closer, Kate feels more and more like a stranger in her own life, as if 45 years of married life pale in comparison to the five years before it. The story of two people who, caught up in unexpected emotions, are forced to bolster themselves against unfamiliar feelings and, in doing so, have the rug pulled out from under their feet. Andrew Haigh's third feature was winner of two Silver Bears for Best Actor and Best Actress when it premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.