September Affair

After mechanical trouble forces a Neapolitan stopover during a flight back to the US, complete strangers Cotten and Fontaine fall into conversation and are soon falling in love. When the plane resumes its journey without them and subsequently crashes, their names on the fatality list promise a new life together in sunny Italy - if he can forget his estranged family, and she forgo her career as a concert pianist. There are echoes of both Random Hearts and Voyage to Italy in this plush bitter-sweet romance, which lays on touristy Italian location work, Walter Huston's famous recording of Weill's 'September Song' and lashings of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto (shades of Brief Encounter), yet spikes its potentially excessive ardour with niggling reminders of past lives. Relatively unshowy star performances help keep the emotions effectively grounded.