Married Life

PG-13	Rottentomatoes.com Rating: 57%	2008
(Mild profanity, a brief--interrupted--sexual encounter)	Picky Flicks Quote: "Superbly directed, thought-provoking blend of Hitchcock movies, 1940s pastiche and Bette Davis-style melodrama." -Matthew Turner, ViewLondon	RUNTIME: 91 mins.
Visit:www.screenit.com for complete details		Movie Mood: Diabolical

Married Life is the story of an aging married man who falls in love with a much younger, prettier woman than his wife and then decides that the best way to avoid telling his wife about the affair and thus causing her pain is to kill her. Yes, that’s right. Nothing better for solving (heck, avoiding) marital strife than a little well-intentioned homicide.

I love it! Why? Because the tone of the movie is so dry, so matter-of-fact, so slyly frank that it makes the most despicable behavior sound almost normal, all while subtly mocking the depravity of it all.

Harry (Chris Cooper at his jowliest and baggy-eyed…est) has a wonderful wife in Pat (the multi-talented Patricia Clarkson). She is attractive for her age, thin, witty, wise, thoughtful and on and on. But she’s not sentimental. In fact, the only place that she really ever comes alive is in the bedroom it seems because, as she bluntly expounds, “Sex is love.” Now men, you may be shouting, “Preach it, sister!” But simmer down for a moment and get this: Harry doesn’t think so. He doesn’t just want physical fulfillment and a dependably delicious dinner on the table every night. He wants to be adored, cherished, pined for. Oh, don’t worry. He’ll take the sex, thank you very much. But it’s not enough.

So, when he happens across Kay (Rachel McAdams as a platinum blonde Hitchcockian bombshell) demurely selling wallpaper at a shop, he’s smitten. He pursues, and surprisingly enough—she’s half his age and three times as lovely—she responds with doe-eyed affection. Heaven knows what she sees in him other than his good (read: monetarily generous) treatment of her, but she certainly doesn’t seem like a gold-digger. (Not that everything in Married Life is what it seems).

Harry’s longtime friend, Rich (an appealingly stubble-jawed Pierce Brosnan), is just as stumped as we are and more than a little jealous. Harry’s always been the plodding bore of the pair, while Rich has hopped, skipped, and jumped his way through a hundred little dalliances with the opposite sex, always careful to skirt the big M word. He gets a sudden hankering to settle down, though, when he hears Kay’s gentle voice issuing from her ruby-red lips. She really is a mystery—a young widow who seems as innocent as a lamb and yet has no compunction about being the mistress of a married man. She wants to “heal” him. Uh huh. Rich is intrigued, maybe even a little obsessed, by the idea of wooing Kay’s attentions away from the undeserving Harry. Not that he’s any younger, but he did start out with a better genetic canvas to wrinkle.

All the while that Rich is working his magic on Kay, Harry’s working through his murderous plot. How best to dispose of Pat without inflicting any physical or emotional pain on her occupies his every thought. His work suffers. He’s having trouble concentrating. Planning a murder is distracting, apparently.

When I told my husband I would review Married Life for Picky Flicks, he balked. In terms of content, there’s very little objectionable in the film (a tiny bit of mild profanity and a brief, inexplicit bedroom scene). But in terms of worldview? It gets a bit sticky. Am I endorsing Married Life's morality (if it has any)? No, not really. The film doesn’t quite know what point to make about its subject. It is, perhaps, not as dark as its premise suggests (though this observation in no way gives away the ending), but there are no “good” characters here. They are all of them selfish and incapable of true feeling, no matter how benign or concerned they may appear.

I realize the movie is attempting to take a swipe at wedlock—something to do with its propensity for routine, which can lead to boredom, loss of love, complacency, etc., but I much more enjoyed the layered sketching of the characters themselves. Whether the director/writers meant to convey this or not, it is evident that the characters’ flippant disregard for anything other than their own immediate desires is the real of cause of their tangled relationships, not the institution of marriage itself.

I would be remiss if I did not point out how superb the acting is all around. The four principle actors I’ve mentioned own their respective character’s mannerisms, weaknesses, and desires completely. It’s a treat to watch their real-life personas both enhance and melt so completely into that of their roles.

Married Life's noirish tendencies are enhanced by its impeccable late-forties period setting—a time when seemingly everyone, regardless of age, health, or religious beliefs smoked like chimneys and drank like fishes, as they say. One might assume they didn’t know any better, but, not unlike Harry’s if-you-can’t-be-with-the-one-you-love-kill-the-one-you’re-with plan, the truth is they probably did and just didn’t care. And even if Married Life does sputter to a bit of an unfulfilling halt at the end, you won't care either because it makes up for it getting there, providing more than a few chills and chuckles along the way.

Here’s to being with the one you love who is the one you’re with!

Until next Wednesday, stay picky! Your mind will thank you later.