Tepid time warp

>> Married Life is a deliberate
but pointless ’50s throwback

by MALCOLM FRASER

The sweeping generalization of the title Married Life seems to indicate that the film will serve up wide and deep scoops of universal truth. In spite of such a broad scope, the actual film is pretty particular. Set in the 1950s, it’s a domestic dilemma: businessman Harry (Chris Cooper) is married to Pat (Patricia Clarkson) but seeing young beauty Kay (Rachel McAdams) on the side. While he dithers over how to go about leaving his wife, his best friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan) develops his own designs on the fetching McAdams. Complications inevitably ensue.

As could be expected from this cast, the performances are solid through and through, but director Ira Sachs has some issues with the overall tone. The film not only takes place in the ’50s, but is actually made in a ’50s filmmaking style. This is a risky move that Todd Haynes pulled off beautifully with Far From Heaven, and that was also used in the not quite successful, but enjoyably manic, screwball pastiche Down With Love.

With Married Life, though, it’s hard to see exactly what the ’50s style brings to the story. Although it’s certainly aesthetically pleasing to revisit an era where people dressed really well, drove really cool cars and smoked all the time, the filmmaking of that era was so mannered and deliberate that to use it today creates an alienating effect; there has to be a reason for it, and in Married Life, it’s never quite clear what the reason is.

This destabilizing formal effect trickles into the content; at certain points, it’s not quite clear whether Sachs intends his material as heavy drama or dark comedy. And if you just look at the story on its own, it’s essentially another film about how difficult life can be for white, middle-aged, upper-middle-class Americans. Hey, they’re entitled to just as much existential angst as everyone else, but it’s a story we’ve all seen before.

Finally, the whole thing is stitched together with a Brosnan voice-over that grossly underestimates viewers’ ability to comprehend the story and infer the themes on our own. If you seek the ’50s vibe, I’d recommend a whole decade’s worth of films that did it just fine the first time.

Married Life opens this
Friday, March 21

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