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Movie review: Married Life
BY MAGGIE SCOTT
To a credit sequence collage of Madison Avenue style images of dapper men and elegant women, and to the vocalizing of Doris Day, the queen of domestic wholesomeness, “Married Life” opens squarely in the era of ascending economic fortune and descending domestic tranquility.
World War II has been over for four years. Men like Harry (Chris Cooper) are solid, middle-class success stories; buying into the American dream and having second thoughts about the women they share it with. As the story begins, Harry’s bachelor friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan) is confessing his “immunity” to the “illness” afflicting Harry; which is a genuine liking for his wife, Pat (Patricia Clarkson).
That liking has deteriorated from the stress of habitual disappointment in the reality of a woman who is always the same. She’s devoted, caring and interested in sex. And, she’s driven Harry into the arms of another woman. As Richard sees over cocktails, Harry has certainly chosen someone with whom he could be “truly happy.”
Kay (Rachel McAdams) is a perfectly sculptured and polished young war widow whose looks, lonely vulnerability and attraction to Harry’s romantic streak make her easily irresistible to Harry. And…to Richard, who determines he will make a play for Kay. Richard probes to read between Kay’s clichéd romantic lines that she wants “to look after Harry” and “make him happy.”
Although her gaze is steady, Richard detects hoped-for uncertainty in her voice when she replies in the affirmative to his question, “Do you love him?” Seeing an opening for switching her loyalties, Richard begins a discreet and calculating courtship of Kay when Harry is otherwise occupied.
Meanwhile, Harry’s warped loyalty to Pat has taken him from hidden discontent and open deceit into a plan to ease his wife painlessly out of their failing marriage: photo development chemicals with a cyanide base mixed with the milk of magnesium she religiously ingests before retiring for the night. A weekend trip to their getaway cabin is where the deed will be done.
But, as is usually the case, Harry has not planned the perfect crime. For, Pat is not the perfect victim. As Richard discovers with an unannounced early visit to the cabin, Pat has got secrets, too, related to satisfying her own romantic needs. None of which involve divorcing Harry. After all, without her, his “clothes would go to pot, or he’d take up with some floozy.
Unaware at the time of Harry’s plans for Pat, Richard feels confident that Kay will be his, while Harry and Pat will “resume their lives in the way couples do.” With a cold dose of reality, Harry realizes at the last minute which woman he can’t afford to lose.
Even with its shades of Postman Always Rings Twice and Suspicion, director Ira Sachs’s adaptation of the novel “Five Roundabouts to Heaven” isn’t quite up to classic genre status. It strings the viewer along with low-key suspense injected with black humor and teases with modest sleaze until the twists and turns lead to what appears to be the conclusion that infidelity can be a legitimate route to knowing who you really are and who you really belong with.
With the exception of Brosnan, Sachs’s cast is a reasonable facsimile of the types that labored in domestic dramas of the ’40s and ’50s and they can be commended for their work. A Sidney Kimmel Entertainment production released by Sony Classics. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and brief sexuality.
