...keeps pussyfooting back and forth between asking us to become emotionally invested and playing itself as parody. A better movie could've done both.
Comment
03/19/08
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Married Life (2008)
57
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:113
Fresh:64
Rotten:49
Average Rating:6/10
Consensus: Married Life has excellent performances and flashes of dark wit, but it suffers from tonal shifts and uneven pacing.
Theatrical Release:Mar 7, 2008 Limited
Box Office: $1,197,472
Synopsis: This melodramatic musing on the trials and tribulations of marriage features a small but talented ensemble cast that includes Patricia Clarkson, Chris Cooper, and Rachel McAdams. Set in 1949, the... [More]
Starring: Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson, Rachel McAdams
Director: Ira Sachs
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Reviews for Married Life
Married Life has enough plot twists and moments of high tension to keep the viewer engaged, but the main points of interest are the characters.
03/18/08
Top CriticAsks the audience to spend a lot of time waiting for not much to happen.
03/17/08
Step back to the guilt and self recrimination of the 1940s film noir in a cozy nest of plotting, cyanide and the best friend's lover. Those subject to nostalgia will love this pot boiler every step of the way.
03/15/08
Sachs and Moverman have scripted a potboiler, but unwisely kept the lid on. Their intent is wry philosophical detachment; the effect is a biting social satire gone soggy.
03/15/08
It's strange. It's different. It's arresting, and it's definitely intentional. Ira Sachs knew what he wanted to do, and he's a talent worth watching.
03/14/08
Top CriticSirk or Billy Wilder could have done something with it. Sachs still has a ways to go.
03/14/08
A macabre comedy of manners with the sting of dry ice, this 2007 ensemble piece captures the social climate of America in the late 40s.
03/14/08
Married Life is structured like a Douglas Sirk melodrama or a Hitchcock thriller rather than a mystery, but it's a mystery nonetheless, because it's rarely clear what Sachs intends the movie to be.
03/14/08
You may not like it if you insist on counting the deck after the game and coming up with 52. But if you get 51 and are amused by how the missing card was made to vanish, this may be a movie to your liking.
03/14/08
Top CriticThere is a lightness and whimsy from the animated opening credits to the bright and explicit glamour of its 1949 world. While the narrative doesn't exactly wink at the camera, it certainly doesn't wallow in what could have been very dark material.
03/14/08
The multiple endings suggest that the filmmakers themselves never really knew what their movie was about.
03/13/08
[T]here is something off with the pacing. The big Hitchcockian suspense sequence toward the end feels like something from the middle of a movie; you expect one more twist, but none develops.
03/13/08
Both romantic and subtly surprising ... you can think of it as a comedy-of-errors murder mystery as Hitchcock might have adapted Thackeray.
03/13/08
Quality actors can inflate standard material like a collagen injection, and great performances help "Married Life" expand beyond the typical double-crossing.
03/13/08
It's only about as interesting as...married life.
03/13/08
Top CriticDirector Ira Sachs plays it wistful not wayward, sticking to essential melodrama and tidy infidelities while dropping narrative cherry bombs for calculated effect.
03/12/08
Cooper and Clarkson are sublime in creating a marriage still filled with tenderness, even as they lie to each other with breezy consistency.
03/10/08
Top CriticMarried Life suffers from its indecision as to whether to be a sophisticated comedy or a heavy dramatic piece and ends up excelling at neither. It's a regrettable collection of bad choices, missed opportunities and a waste of a great cast.
03/09/08
There's gentile satire here, to go along with suspense and sexual intrigue, but the tone of the piece stays too melodramatic to hit its potential to resonate. Every actor pours on his or her best, in a tempered showcase movie that's worth seeing.
03/08/08
Latest News for Married Life
September 04, 2008:
The ensemble cast chemistry is superb in its nearly suffocating tangle of repressed passions, but the family-values wrap-up of all these messy erotic tensions feels ultimately far too pat and unresolved. 
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March 06, 2008:
The ensemble cast chemistry is superb in its nearly suffocating tangle of repressed passions, but the family-values wrap-up of all these messy erotic tensions feels ultimately far too pat and unresolved.
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February 09, 2008:
Trailer & Poster review
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