Married Life.

"[Ira] Sachs's previous features, Forty Shades of Blue and The Delta, which racked up sufficiently good notices to allow him to raid the top drawer of indie talent for Married Life, also dealt with the mysteries of domestic life," writes Ella Taylor in the Voice. "But Married Life is his first real excursion into genre filmmaking, and though it's a perfectly presentable effort, he lacks the passion and the radical vision of the filmmaker to whom he owes his biggest debt. Sachs co-wrote the script for Married Life with Oren Moverman, who also co-wrote Todd Haynes's I'm Not There, and though the imprint of Douglas Sirk is all over Sachs's homage to old movies about restless men in bad suits and untrustworthy women in lovely frocks, his immediate reference point is clearly Haynes's Far From Heaven.

Updated through 3/8.

"Married Life falls somewhere between parodic pastiche and straightforward narrative," writes Chris Wisniewski at indieWIRE. "Like Todd Haynes's Far from Heaven, it filters its period details through classical Hollywood genre while nevertheless striving for emotional resonance. Where Haynes pulled off this nearly impossible gambit, though, Sachs falls short on both counts."

"The movie is a goof on Hitchcock and Sirk - a period (late forties) soap opera with nasty sexual undertones and the omnipresent threat of murder," writes David Edelstein in New York.

"When to shudder and when to smirk: as you watch this sly marital fable of secrets, lies and homicidal intent, you're never sure of what your reaction should be," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Up to a point, the director... clearly wants it that way."

"What starts as a dark comedy that plays like a film noir, or a film noir that plays as a dark comedy, detours into a melodramatic comedy of manners and ends up confused," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times.

"As a committed bachelor who takes an interest in his best friend's mistress, [Pierce] Brosnan is by far the most compelling element of Married Life," argues Scott Tobias at the AV Club.

For S James Snyder, writing in the New York Sun, it "loses its sizzle as it tries to balance B-movie fun and Oscar-minded doses of social commentary."

"I tried out an intellectual experiment for this FilmCatcher article 'Burdens of Conscience,' comparing David Gordon Green's Snow Angels, Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park and Ira Sachs's Married Life," blogs Anthony Kaufman. "You'd think these three very disparate films, by three very different filmmakers, would share little in common, but in fact, buried beneath the surface, I found some remarkable similitaries in their thematic concerns - namely, that we must come to terms with our complicity in other people's pain, as well as our own." And he talks with Sachs.

Online listening tip. Chris Cooper is a guest on Fresh Air.

Earlier: Reviews from the New York Film Festival.

Updates, 3/8: "Married Life, which is set in 1949, doesn't have much on its mind besides providing its audience with a few twists, some lush period trappings, and the occasional frisson of suspense," writes Slate's Dana Stevens. "But parlor games have their uses, too. Sachs's script... cleverly balances a farcical tone with some scenes of real feeling and at least one moment of white-knuckle suspense."

"[A]lthough this whole picture is inarguably a fluffy affair that would be hard-pressed to justify its existence to a multiplex herd, the dance between the talented leads and Sachs' creative energy establish a baseline of quality that Married Life never sinks below," writes Ryan Stewart for Premiere.

Online listening tip. Cooper and Patricia Clarkson are guests on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Posted by dwhudson at March 7, 2008 12:03 PM