Debra Winger will forever be Wonder Girl to me, but of course she has assembled a comprehensive body of work since that early role back in the 1970s. One of her latest projects is 'The Lovers', in which she plays Mary, the distaff half of a middle-aged couple whose marriage seems to be on its last legs. Mary and her husband Michael (Tracy Letts) are perfectly civil to each other, but both are having affairs with younger people. A visit by their college student son Joel (Tyler Ross) seems as if it will provide the catalyst for a split, but then the unexpected happens: Mary and Michael fall back in love...
Winger does a lot of 'face acting' in this: much posing of the eyebrows. Unfortunately this makes it seem more like she is puzzling over a particularly difficult crossword clue than mourning the break-up of her decades-old marriage. Letts is more impressive, even if, every time I looked at him, I thought of John Lithgow. As Joel, Ross merely has to say "fuck" a lot. (Also, in one scene he punches through a wall, but his punch sounded more like a gentle love-tap - that house must be made of cardboard!)
While it is fitting - in the portrayal of a couple who have been together for decades - to say a lot without words, there are times when this film takes the concept too far: for instance, it is unclear just how much Mary and Michael know about each other's 'secret' lives; certainly when confronted by Michael's 'other woman' Mary is upset, but does not seem surprised. The eventual decision to split is also arrived at with hardly any discussion - I actually thought the showing I attended at the 2017 London Film Festival had left out a couple of scenes! Nonetheless, the film is good fun, was enjoyable to watch once and I shall probably watch it again.
Winger does a lot of 'face acting' in this: much posing of the eyebrows. Unfortunately this makes it seem more like she is puzzling over a particularly difficult crossword clue than mourning the break-up of her decades-old marriage. Letts is more impressive, even if, every time I looked at him, I thought of John Lithgow. As Joel, Ross merely has to say "fuck" a lot. (Also, in one scene he punches through a wall, but his punch sounded more like a gentle love-tap - that house must be made of cardboard!)
While it is fitting - in the portrayal of a couple who have been together for decades - to say a lot without words, there are times when this film takes the concept too far: for instance, it is unclear just how much Mary and Michael know about each other's 'secret' lives; certainly when confronted by Michael's 'other woman' Mary is upset, but does not seem surprised. The eventual decision to split is also arrived at with hardly any discussion - I actually thought the showing I attended at the 2017 London Film Festival had left out a couple of scenes! Nonetheless, the film is good fun, was enjoyable to watch once and I shall probably watch it again.