
On top of arbitrary time jumps where characters age rapidly from scene to scene, you really never know what’s going to happen next, and not in a good way. So much of this film is either a political or historical slog. Despite feelings for each other, their personal commitments are determined to keep them apart, and that time apart is really what the vast majority of the film follows. Hana, played Game of Thrones’ very own Carice van Houten, is a teacher whose marriage to a Jewish man keeps her tied to her homeland. Liesel, played by Hanna Alström ( The Kingsman franchise), is a recently matriarch who seeks to flee the country in the hopes of a better life for her family. Taking place at around the time of WWII, the film is more about each of the women’s struggle to survive. Without giving too much away, the two women do fall for each other and do eventually have some sort of physical relationship, but that’s really only a fraction of what the film is about. In the film, it’s reduced to a location where the two lead women used to spend time together as friends.Īs mentioned before, the film’s title refers to and implies that a forbidden love affair is at the heart of the story. If you’re wondering what the titular “Glass Room” is, in the novel it’s a room in a house built for one of the women that becomes an important setting for major fictional and real events.

Based on the novel, The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer, The Affair follows the relationship between two women before, during, and after World War II.
