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Where We Started, the third feature film from writer-director Chris Hansen, is a modest, unassuming two-character portrait about a couple of married strangers — mechanic and struggling actor Will (Matthew Brumlow), unsatisfied housewife and mother Nora (Cora Vander Broek) — who meet at a motel and end up spending a long night together.

Their connection is formed over cigarettes, cosmopolitans, late-night diner food, a shared love of John Hughes movies, and flirtatious arguments about make-out music.

Hansen, the director of the Film and Digital Media program at Baylor University, crafts their conversations with a delicate mix of shot/reverse-shot cutting and longer shots that contain both actors, giving each of them space and time to nurture the dueli...

Most cinematic extramarital affairs include two absolutes: One, get to the sex as quickly as possible. Two, concentrate most of the plot around the after effects of the affair. Example, see Fatal Attraction.

For his third feature film, Where We Started, writer/director Chris Hansen uses an unusual tactic: He ignores both of the above absolutes and focuses primarily on the he/she back and forth leading up to the possibility of a little extramarital nookie.

Hansen’s approach, one would have to imagine, is closer to the reality of how true extramarital affairs work, that average American suburban married couples just don’t jump easily into bed with the first available complete stranger. Despite what statistics might say about divorce and infidelity in modern America, or what we see in any given episode of Mad Men, is cheating on a spouse such an easy emotional decision to make?

Hansen...

Nora and Will immediately hit it off when they randomly meet while staying separately at a roadside motel. Their innocent flirting soon turns more serious and the couple start to contemplate their future together. The only problem is that they’re married. To other people.

Where We Started is the third feature film by Chris Hansen, who previously directed the indie drama Endings and the mockumentary The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah.

Actor Matthew Brumlow, who previously starred in Endings, stars here as Will while Cora Vander Broek stars as Nora.

Currently in post-production, the film will be making its debut later this year. For more info and to get updates on the film, please visit its Facebook page.

Filmmaker Chris Hansen‘s third feature film has gotten an official title. The still-in-production movie has been known as An Affair, but that title has always been considered just a placeholder. Hansen is now reporting on his blog that, after kicking around and testing various ideas, he’s settled on a new official title: Where We Started.

The film is being shot in the Waco, Texas area and chronicles the connection two strangers, who are married but not to each other, make. Disillusioned with how their lives have turned out, the couple contemplate having a romantic affair with each other after forming an emotional bond. The two leads are played by Matthew Brumlow and Cora Vander Broek.

And if you’re not reading the insightful production journal that Hansen has been keeping of the shoot, well, you’re missing out.

Below is an image I grabbed from that journal of...

Filmmaker and Baylor University professor Chris Hansen wants to have an affair. No, not that kind! He’s currently in pre-production on his latest feature film called simply An Affair, a will-they-or-won’t-they drama about a man and a woman who meet in a hotel. Although married to other people, they have a flirtatious evening that runs the risk of turning into something more serious. To help promote the film, which will being lensing in June 2011, Hansen has created a pair of videos exploring the main characters’ inner turmoil. Her side of the affair is embedded above, and his is below.

In developing the film, Hansen is workshopping the script with his actors. The male lead, Will, is played by Matthew Brumlow, one of the stars of Hansen’s previous film, Endings. The female lead, Leah, is played by Cora Vander Broek, who is new to Hansen’s films, but is not unfamiliar with Brumlow.

A collision course with death proves to be a pleasant journey in Chris Hansen’s second feature film, Endings.

Previously, Hansen has directed two comedies — the feature-length The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah and the featurette Clean Freak — but here he slides comfortably into dramatic territory with the tale of a young girl, Emmy (Emma Hansen), a middle-aged mother, Adonna (Ellen Dolan) and a drug addict, Chris (Matthew Brumlow) who all meet on what each of them think is their last day on Earth.

What sounds like a potentially schmaltzy premise is actually handled with a very low-key approach that successfully confounds expectations. There are two main saving graces to the film:

One is that from the outset, Hansen never tips his hand as to what kind of movie this exactly is. Meaning, that most films in which the audience is told in the beginning that a key player,...