The Other Woman

The Other Woman is a 2009 American drama film written and directed by Don Roos. It is based on the Ayelet Waldman novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits and stars Natalie Portman, Lisa Kudrow, and Charlie Tahan. It was released in the United Kingdom as Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. It was distributed by IFC Films in the US. Plot Emilia (Natalie Portman) is a young lawyer from New York, who in a short time has seen her life come to tragedy: she and her husband Jack (Scott Cohen) have separated following the death of their only daughter, Isabel, from SIDS. Emilia views this loss as a punishment and cannot move on with her life by having more children after finding out she is sterile. Vilified as a homewrecker, she attracts the unyielding ire of Jack's furious ex-wife, Carolyn (Lisa Kudrow), who is revealed to also be pregnant (after she heard about Isabel's death, she realized that she too wanted another child). Emilia thinks that this is purely out of spite. Now she must come to terms with her stepson, William (Charlie Tahan), who upsets her with constant references to her late little girl (including saying that under the terms of Jewish law, Isabel did not live long enough to be considered a full human being). Emilia's efforts to bond with William do not go well and succeed only in making both Carolyn and Jack think less of her. Conquered in her crisis and increasingly unfinished, Emilia finds the courage to tell Jack of the details never confessed about the death of their daughter Isabel. That morning, Emilia did not find her dead in the crib, but on her breast, where most likely the baby girl was suffocated after her mother had fallen asleep. Despite the fact that the couple had called an ambulance, there was nothing left to do. The terrible guilt of having killed her own daughter is the real cause of her uneasiness.