Married Life

In the film “Married Life,” Pat Allen

(Patricia Clarkson, “Pieces of April”)

tells her husband Harry (Chris Cooper,

“American Beauty”) that “love is sex.” Pat

and Harry are a middle-aged couple in

a rut living in the 1940s. Unlike his wife,

Harry is a sentimentalist who has loftier

notions of love. He tells his best friend

Richard (Pierce Brosnan, “Die Another

Day”), “I always dreamed of a woman being

truly in love with me.”

This difference of opinion, which

could have been wonderfully humorous,

develops into a mundane debate between

practical and romantic approaches to life.

It’s a good representation of the entire

movie, which has the potential to be as

witty as an Oscar Wilde play, but ends up

too cliché to rise to its own challenge.

Harry’s disappointment with his

married life drives him into the arms of

Kay (Rachel McAdams, “Mean Girls”), a

widow with a pin-up girl’s physique and

a Goethe-like conception of love. In an

act of imprudence, Harry introduces Kay

to Richard, who is single and handsome.

Richard decides that Kay is his next conquest.

The plot twists, turns, and thickens

with every scene. Sensitive Harry believes

that if he were to leave Pat, she would suffer

immensely. “I can’t stand to see anyone

suffer,” he says. So he decides to kill her.

Unfortunately, Cooper seems more like a

former CIA agent embarking on a freelance

operation than a troubled husband

who is about to assassinate his beloved

wife of two decades.

The scenes in which Harry plans the

murder are suspenseful and gripping, but

fail to provide an insightful glimpse into

the soul of a disillusioned married man.

The plot twist turns “Married Life” into

“The Bourne Ultimatum.”

While Cooper’s performance is far

from excellent, Clarkson does an amazing

job as the pill-popping, powder-consuming

wife who is oblivious to her husband’s

sudden change in character. Brosnan is

equally nuanced as the worst best friend

who tries to take away the girl. 007 is a

convincing Casanova at whatever age,

even though he has to pull it off without

the accent.

Harry’s emotional crisis sets off subsequent

emotional conflicts that affect each

of the four two-faced leading characters.

Writer and director Ira Sachs suggests

that married life is a web of emotions that

makes people deceive their loved ones.

The movie itself is a deception, however;

marriage, as any gender studies concentrator

could tell you, is a contract that

binds together people’s lives in more than

one way. Sachs, an award-winning director,

flattens the complexity of this ancient

establishment into a humorless discussion

on the possibility of true love.