What Is the Story of Brief Encounter?
Brief Encounter is a sweeping love story, aptly described in its opening film credits as “approved for public exhibition to the incurably romantic.” Alec and Laura meet in a train station and fall madly in love with one another, albeit in a restrained, British stiff-upper-lip sort of way. They are both married, so although they are swept away by their love for one another, the rules of polite society at the time (1930s Britain) make their passion a forbidden one. This black and white melodrama is neatly folded into the show’s more colorful love stories: a romance between the mistress of the train station tearoom and a station master and the puppy love of the tearoom assistant and her highwaters-wearing boyfriend.
