A married couple preparing to celebrate their wedding anniversary receives shattering news that promises to forever change the course of their lives.
Kate (Charlotte Rampling) and Geoff Mercer (Sir Tom Courtenay) are planning to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary with dozens of friends. The event is to take place soon in the community hall of Norwich, the town near which they live. A week before the party, Geoff receives a letter which, although he tries to hide it, obviously troubles him. When his wife asks him what is going on, Geoff tells her that the body of Katya, his first great love who disappeared fifty years before in the Alps, has just been found in a melting glacier. From then on, Geoff starts behaving more and more strangely and for the first time after so many years Kate asks herself who the man she married so long ago really is.—Guy Bellinger
There is just one week until Kate Mercer's 45th wedding anniversary and the planning for the party is going well. But then a letter arrives for her husband. The body of his first love has been discovered, frozen and preserved in the icy glaciers of the Swiss Alps. By the time the party is upon them, five days later, there may not be a marriage left to celebrate.
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, lets him know that a body has been found: that 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. 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. Geoff begins smoking again; reminisces at length about his carefree time with his previous 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, they delve further into their past, leaving their future in question.—yusufpiskin
Five years after retirees Kate (Charlotte Rampling) and Geoff Mercer (Tom Courtenay) had to cancel their 40th wedding anniversary because of his heart bypass surgery, the comfortably-off, childless, Norfolk couple are now planning to celebrate their 45th anniversary with dozens of friends at the Assembly House in Norwich.Kate and Geoff have a quiet life in the community. Chris (Sam Alexander) is the local postman and even he knows of the couple's upcoming 45th wedding anniversary. Kate used to Chris's teacher at school.
A week before the party, Geoff receives a letter from Switzerland telling him that the body of Katya, his lover in the early 1960s, has become visible in a melting glacier where she fell into a crevasse on their hike with a German guide over five decades ago. Katya's body has still not been extracted from the glacier, but it is visible due to the clear and pure water and ice. Geoff says that the authorities must have made an assumption about it being Katya because of the location of the body or maybe what she was wearing.Memories rush back to him, and he realizes he has forgotten much of what little German he used to know and that he would need a dictionary to fully understand all that the letter says.
Kate has been told about Katya previously by Geoff and seems initially unconcerned by his controlled disquiet.Kate is busy finalizing the arrangements for their 45th anniversary party.
The next day Kate helps Geoff find his old German-English dictionary. Soon, Geoff's conduct begins to show that there is more on his mind than he says. Among other things, he tries to keep from Kate that he is beginning to take steps to fly to Switzerland without her to see Katya's body, which he imagines preserved in the now-transparent ice, still looking youthful. Kate says that there is no need for him to go. Kate argues that Geoff might have to climb a mountain and Geoff doesn't even like to walk around the neighborhood.
Prodded by Kate, Geoff talks about his relationship with Katya and thoughts evoked by the discovery of her body. Geoff tells Kate that he and Katya had pretended to be married in order to be able to share a room in the more puritanical early 1960s. Because of this, the Swiss authorities consider him to be Katya's next of kin.Geoff narrates the exact circumstances of Katya's death. Katya and their German guide were walking up ahead on a glacier trail. When Katya fell into the crevasse, she didn't really scream, it was more like emptying her lungs from the shock of falling suddenly. By the time Geoff got there, she was gone.Geoff says that Katya was 2 years older than him.
Even as turmoil brews in their personal life, Kate tries to act normal with her friends Lena (Geraldine James) and George (David Sibley) and their daughter Sally (Dolly Wells). Geoff is disengaged in those conversations and brooding in his own thoughts, which is very visible to Kate.Kate realizes that she and Geoff do not many pictures of their own life together. She attributes it to them not having kids.
As the days pass and preparations for the party continue, Geoff continues to be moody and takes up smoking, which both had given up in the past. One night, Geoff climbs into the attic to look at his memorabilia of Katya and only reluctantly shows Kate a picture of Katya when she insists. Katya looked a lot like Kate with her dark hair. Kate starts to ponder all of her life with Geoff, even begins "to smell Katya's perfume" in every room.Kate starts to suspect that Geoff regrets his life with Kate and now contemplates what could have been, if he had the chance to live his life again with Katya.
While Geoff is attending a reunion luncheon at the plant from which he retired, Kate, neglecting their dog's jittery barking at the ladder, climbs up into the attic to see what things her husband may be keeping there. She finds Geoff's scrapbook filled with memorabilia from his life with Katya, including pressed flowers from their last hike. And then she finds a carousel slide projector, loaded with images of Switzerland and Katya, next to a makeshift screen to view them. One slide shows Katya with her hand on top of her protruding abdomen, indicating Katya was pregnant at the time of her death.
Kate takes up smoking again, too, and confronts Geoff about his feelings for Katya without revealing what she saw in the attic. Geoff promises that their marriage will "start again," which he begins by bringing her tea to bed and making breakfast for her the next morning.
They attend their anniversary party in the historical Grand Hall. Kate is constrained, distracted, and remains impassive during Geoff's speech in which he professes his love for Kate, while saying "the choices we make in our youth are most important" and bringing himself to tears, just as Kate's friend Lena (Geraldine James) has predicted men always do at weddings and anniversaries.
Geoff and Kate dance, but she moves rigidly in his embrace. As the dance ends, Geoff raises their hands together in the air. Kate yanks her arm down after a few seconds, and the final close-up isolates her amid the crush of people on the dance floor and a multitude of emotions play across her face. This final scene has been likened to that in The Long Good Friday.
