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About the movie
Married Life
Rating: 
Cast:
Pierce Brosnan; Rebecca Codling; Chris Cooper; Pauline Crawford; Patricia Clarkson
Directed by:
Ira Sachs
On the web:
- Married Life trailer
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Canny star turn by Pierce Brosnan fuels retro-feeling, multi-toned 'Married Life'
If you can slow yourself down to the stately pace of 1950 (a whiskey sour or two might help), you might enjoy the offbeat "Married Life."
It's an antique replica of a postwar film (comparisons have been made to "Far From Heaven," but it's not that arch), filmed in the style and rhythms of the time, populated with characters whose actions are guided by the propriety and psychology of another era. (Ira Sachs has adapted the movie from an obscure 1953 novel.)
A staid businessman (Chris Cooper) has become infatuated with a younger woman (Rachel McAdams, with a Lana Turner turn). He's contemplating divorce, and confides as much to his slightly debauched best friend, Rich (Pierce Brosnan).
Rich is content to play role of detached adviser until he meets the girl. In '50s parlance, she's a dish. And he, being a man of low character, decides the best thing he can do to preserve his friend's marriage (to Patricia Clarkson) is to make the mistress his own.
Brosnan has become a more interesting actor as he's gotten older. Here, he uses his fading glamor-puss looks to good effect, allowing his face to become a portrait of dissolution - an impression that Rich's actions support.
It's best not to go too far into what Rich sees and does as he goes after the pretty blonde. But it turns out that there's much more to his friend's marriage than meets the eye.
And it's fun to peer through the curtains via Rich's jaded eyes. His character narrates the movie, and while the viewer finds him reliable, his dealings with other characters in the movie show him to be amusingly self-serving and deceptive.
It's a good actor who can tell us what he's thinking with just a twinkle of the eye, and Brosnan has a delightful moment here when Rich realizes he's in possession of marital secrets unknown to the spouses themselves.
In such moments, "Married Life" plays as a comedy of manners, though the humor is as dry as the driest martini Rich has ever quaffed. At other times, "Married Life" presents itself as a thriller. In these passages, it may be too retro for its own good - bits of suspense that suggest Hitchcock creeping along in first gear.
"Married Life" seems happy not to settle on a tone, but its pace and style are consistent, and so is its regard for its characters. It's not laughing at them, nor using them as noir fodder. It takes its title seriously, and asks how we can really know what goes on in a marriage, even the one we're in. *
Produced by Sidney Kimmel, Jawal Jga, Steve Golin and Ira Sachs, directed by Ira Sachs, written by Ira Sachs and Oren Moverman, music by Dickon Hinchliffe, distributed by MGM.
