This still is from Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 movie Possession.
The two characters, husband and wife played by Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani, are having a conversation on whether she is seeing someone else.
I watched this movie a couple of years ago and still this framing sticks in my head. It’s just interesting that the two wouldn’t sit at the same table, they sit at this weird angle forced by a cornered wall.
For the most part they don’t even look at each other, they just converse like this. It adds a whole new layer of tension to the scene as the camera slowly dollies closer to them.
I’ve been reading David Bordwell’s book Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging which is an analysis on a number of different dinner scenes between small groups of characters. It demonstrates different ways in which these scenes, which are typical of most films, can be framed, shot, edited, and blocked. It goes through a number of films by a number of different directors and goes into a lot of detail on how such a simple scene can be done.
A lot of films tend to operate on the same set of standards. A dinner conversation like this would have back and forth coverage between the actors, which is a fine thing to do. We know that it works.
But a choice like this one is just a touch more weighty.