Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film directed by David Lean about the conventions of British suburban life, centring on a housewife for whom real love (as opposed to the polite arrangement of her marriage) brings unexpectedly violent emotions. The film stars Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey. The screenplay is by Noël Coward, and is based on his 1936 one-act play Still Life. The soundtrack prominently features the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff, played by Eileen Joyce. Laura Jesson (Johnson), a suburban housewife in a dull but affectionate marriage, tells her story in the first person while at home with her husband, imagining that she is confessing her affair to him. Conventional Laura, like most women of her class at that time, goes to a nearby town once a week for shopping and to the cinema for a matinée. Returning from one such excursion to Milford, while waiting at the station, she is helped by another passenger to remove a piece of grit...