nothing lasts, really.

I don’t usually… feel this way at 11 o’clock in the morning.

I feel like I'm gonna dream tonight...

But I can't get married. You'd never wash your shirts and collars. You wouldn't even shave in the morning. If I didn't clean your desk, nobody would. Remember when you tried to cook rice and burned it? You'd be eating burnt rice every day. You'd be helpless, I know.

ofc I don't mind, and I appreciate you asking! one of my favorite aspects of brief encounter is how it works as a really beautiful and interesting love story whether you interpret alec as a character who's completely sincere and really accidentally falls in love in this happenstance way, or if you have a more cynical view wherein he may have been more calculating in his pursuit of laura or perhaps is even a serial philanderer. or maybe he falls somewhere in between. he's so lovely talking about metal dust – but some of his lines really feel like lines – and he's always the active pursuer, inviting himself to the movies, professing his love on their second meeting when she's willing to let it go unsaid forever, staying at the flat when she says really she must go home... etc. and i think trevor howard embodies this complexity very well. idk! i just find i think something different about him every time, it's almost like a litmus test.

since the story is told from laura's point of view (excepting the scene in stephen lynn's flat), we'll never know for sure. but what makes brief encounter such a great story to ME (which took me many rewatches to figure out) is laura's subjectivity and celia johnson's performance and how much you really can feel laura's isolation and dissatisfaction with her community and her love and admiration of this charming stranger and the fall and the escapism and the guilt – none of which are negated by either interpretation of alec. (and can i just say, it's not like she becomes some sort of pathetic/pitiful/naive character if you read alec as insincere/deceitful – you can still empathize with her completely – and in fact i think her character has a certain awareness/insecurity of the possibility of being a pitiful woman amongst 'men of the world')

hope that makes sense !! but basically i think #tome the great love stories can survive and reward both the cynical and sincere view and do something interesting regardless...