WIDESCREEN FOCUS: THE LOVERS

THE LOVERS | A24 Films | Directed by Azazel Jacobs | Drama, Comedy | 94 min. | R

It's somewhat fitting that THE LOVERS shares its title with the French film from Louis Malle almost sixty years on. At the height of the French New Wave, Malle bucked the trend and delivered a film challenging the expectations of onscreen romance: focus on the struggles of a woman breaking out of the trappings of a loveless marraige with an incendiary, destructive affair. 

In the curent state of culture, you can take a break from the everyday by scrolling the phone, texting your annoyance at it, basically ignore everything - and everyone - around you. Thus, the evolution of where we find longtime married couple Michael (Tracey Letts) and Mary (Debra Winger) in suburban Los Angeles: an affair dependent on cheating through the course of each day on the phone. In this film, both the husband and wife feels equally trapped by the other, but with the ease of the internet and technology, don't feel a need to voice their frustrations and can communicate with their prospective affairs without a second glance at each other.    

Mary (Debra Winger) shares a glass of awkwardness with longtime husband Michael (Tracy Letts)

In a genius duel of laissez-faire between Mary and Michael, each goes about their day thinking all is on track to leave the other with their respective lover in the weeks ahead. Mary with her dashing enfant terrible Robert (Aiden Gillan, Game of Thrones) and Robert with his damaged little ballerina Lucy (Melora Walters, SHORT TERM 12), with practically no care for their spouse, save the obvious reveal from what the day may brings as each escape work, errands and life to devote the limited time available to ensure their "other" is comforted that soon, they'll leave to make the affair a real relationship.

  

Debra Winger is a woman reborn as Mary and handles her double life with one eye towards what could be, but emotes the plausibility of potential regret for the disolve of her family and well-kept life as it has been built. Writhing her aggravation with each line she lashes at both her spouse and her lover. The viewer can understand that she is having fun but equally laments at the potential future while she comforts her immature Robert. But how these other lovers add their shade of consolation for their paramour (Gillan's inelegant white man dance to get Mary's mind off their issues is priceless to strain through, alerting the "get it over with" that the film shouts through its scenes), you understand what each is missing: what they had.

Mary (Winger) takes a break at the local bar with her other man, Robert (Aiden Gillan)

It is this obsession of getting beyond the public perception that tests the limits of what he and

The film pushes through the inevitable as the couple's only child Joel (Tyler Ross) comes home from college to introduce them to his longtime girlfriend Erin (Jennifer Sula). Thus, the unraveling begins. Excuses pile up to their lovers, reasoning for holding out until the visit is complete, and the frustration on their lack of understanding is palpable.

Mary (Winger), Joel (Tyler Ross) and Erin (Jennifer Sula) trudge through the day with Michael (Letts)

What results is a 180: the care and concern about the situation at hand rekindles an awkward, unfamiliar, years-lost feeling towards one another.  Passion is sparked and the roles reversed towards their prospective lovers and the results are messy. The decisions are conflicting, both for the viewer and those it affects. It is that sense of reacting to change that is so disconcerting, it is the ultimate game changer, and life shouldn't be handled like a game. That all comes to the surface as the changes become evident.

There is a reveal that challenges conventions and ensures discussion about THE LOVERS in a way that may not be considered at the beginning of the film; a disparate reaction towards the final resolution, that is just as complicated and rewarding as everyday life.  

THE LOVERS is now playing in select theaters