If the 87% Rotten Tomatoes rating gives you the urge to see this movie, #Resist. (Sorry about that political reference, but I couldn’t #Resist.) This is Fences all over again, very good actors who play miserable, lying spouses making others around them miserable, including the audience. This is why you cannot solely rely on Rotten Tomatoes.
To Hollywood, this seems an unusual premise, i.e., that cheating spouses might cheat on their lovers, with each other. Having listened to divorce cases for 14 years, it didn’t seem that unusual to me; cheaters gonna’ cheat! The pace of this movie is very slow, the dialogue boring. To the director’s credit, the close-ups and angles were great. But, you get tired of watching a husband and wife trying to keep their lies straight.
Debra Winger (1982-An Officer and a Gentleman) plays the wife and Tracy Letts (The Big Short- now that was a great movie!) is even better as her husband. Melora Walters is Husband’s lover but acts 50 something going on 15. Aiden Gillen, as wife’s lover, can’t figure out whether he should use his American or Irish accent and should have stayed in The Game of Thrones (where he is very good, by the way).
Finally, the ending of the movie is a surprise, but one that makes no sense. I guess one can argue that cheating and lying are not logical but they are at least consistent with (some) human behavior. I can hear Spock telling Captain Kirk that “this behavior was not logical.” Enjoy the weekend and your loved ones; you won’t love this movie!
Loved the intro to this post.