Introduction: Sexual Temporalities

TL;DRAbstract

Based on a short story by Noël Coward, the British film Brief Encounter (1945) depicts the thwarted affair between housewife mother Laura Jesson and married doctor Alec Harvey, whom she meets by chance on a train. The film is predominantly set in trains and train stations, so that the relationship develops against a backdrop of clocks, schedules and timetables. The control time exerts over the lives of the protagonists is emphasized in the still (Figure 1) by the large, bright station clock, which looms over Laura. The regulated temporality of trains and stations reinforces the idea that Laura and Alec are on the verge of deviating from the ordered, routine time line of heterosexual and marital life. The play with temporal order is emphasized by the structure of the narrative itself, which opens with the end of Laura and Alec’s relationship. The lovers board separate trains, which take them back to their respective family lives. Laura is embedded in heteronormative time — she has board

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