The Lovers
Directed by Azazel Jacobs
Starring Debra Winger, Tracy Letts
Rated R
Playing at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, Angelika Film Center
In a nondescript comfortable suburbia, within a story about an everyday married couple, “The Lovers” finds levels of tension that rival the best thrillers and depths of dark comedy that compare favorably with past classics of marital despair.
The scope of this feat, masterminded by writer-director Azazel Jacobs and a cast with just four major characters headed by Tracy Letts and Debra Winger as that married couple, should not be understated.
Here’s a movie that turns the experience of a husband, Michael (Letts), returning home and joining his wife Mary (Winger) on the couch to watch a movie, into a masterwork of physicality and nonverbal communication, in which the full extent of their unhappiness together and the scope of the challenges facing a marriage set for an impending collapse, are conveyed by gestures as small as Michael’s uncomfortable stuttering pause and Mary’s withering stare.
It does so through some top-level acting by Letts and Winger, who effortlessly convey an intensity of feeling and the uncomfortable experience of having to keep it perpetually moderated and internalized.
And it does so thanks to the ways Jacobs seamlessly explores the empty space between these people, with pathos imbued in the way his camera gently absorbs the quiet moments mixed with the meticulous wide framing of a physical comedy.
There’s piquant irony in the narrative, in which both Michael and Mary have lovers of their own (played by Aidan Gillen and Melora Walters) and are simultaneously close to ending the marriage, before their spark suddenly reignites after a half-asleep kiss and accidentally waking up face-to-face.
Most of all, “The Lovers” conveys a spirit of frustration and confusion that effectively captures the fundamentally illogical nature of romance, the fact that these sorts of sudden bursts of passion have a way of eternally messing things up.
