Unasked-For Comments About New Movies

Ira Sachs's Married Life

Don't listen to me about movies, people. I know absolutely nothing about them! In fact, I recently walked out of the boring small-town divorce drama Snow Angels, then looked it up on rottentomatoes.com and found it's gotten 90% raves! And I just read a perfectly nice review of Married Life, but I have to say THAT film—a pseudo-droll bit of marital mayhem—combines almost every narrative device that makes me crazy: Too much narration ("It's funny, isn't it? What you do for love?"); stick-figure characters; someone entering just when two people are in a clutch they're not supposed to be in; very sloooowly spoken utterances, never overlapping; characters calling each other by their names every time they speak ("Harry, they're all over the place" "I'll burn them tomorrow morning, Kay"); and lots of emissions stating the banal. ("That must be the paper delivery. I'll go down and get it for you, Pat"). Even if all of those devices were intentional and sardonic, I feel they deeply let me down with their desperate dullness. But again, go and enjoy! I know nothing, Pat, Harry, and Kay!