The Lovers (2017)

I once heard from the film Love Story that “love means never having to say you’re sorry.”  In the case of Azazel Jacobs film these two characters will probably never do that.  The Lovers stars Debra Winger and Tracy Letts as a couple so far out of love I doubt they know what the definition of the word means anymore.  Because the couple is so far removed from the marriage they decide to have affairs with other people with the intent of telling the other half it’s over before their college aged son arrives home for a holiday break.

What makes The Lovers such a unique film is that it thrives on the ugliness and uncomfortable nature of this couple’s marriage.  Letts’s Michael is a man muted of opinion in both his marriage and his affair and you get the feeling that all he really desires is to relax with someone he cares about after a long day of working.  You get the feeling Michael is occasionally granted that relief in his affair with Melora Walters’s Lucy, despite fighting with her about when to reveal the affair.  Winger’s Mary wants to be noticed and she gets that in the form of Aidan Gillen’s Robert.  The issue with all three relationships is that only the secret lovers really can pull the trigger on being in the relationship with the people they involved with.  In reality, the secret lovers would be a better fit for each other but maybe that’s just my happy ending for the film.

I like The Lovers because the audience is basically being asked to watch a marriage degrade.  The only reason the marriage rebuild is because the couple the film focuses on falls in love with two other very unexpected people: each other.  The scene in question where that occurs is as normal as anything.  The husband gives the wife a small kiss after waking up in the morning and then they look at each other as if to say we really screwed this marriage thing up let’s just have fun and then they do.

What I think Azazel Jacobs intends for the audience to get out of the film is that the whole of marriage is an uneasy commitment filled with ups and downs.  The best way through it isn’t always together but at least it’s a shared experience where each person can feel understood.  The problem is marriage with another person doesn’t always give us a better understanding of them but we hope it does.  Mary and Michael get their passion back for each other by taking understanding out of the equation.  These moments are where the film gains both pace and strength because it slowly dons on anyone watching that may just be what this couple needs.  He directs everything from an uncomfortable level of closeness which made me and other audience members feel like we were spying on a marriage.

I would be completely remiss if I failed to talk about the secret lovers in this enigma of a romantic dramedy.  Aidan Gillen is fine as Robert.  He is the soulful attentive type that Mary required of Robert all those years ago.  He’s a man that stands for something and is the emotional opposite of Michael which is why their scenes have sparkle.  Lucy, on the other hand, is way over the top.  Melora Walters literally looks like she shouldn’t be in a relationship of any kind and I have no idea why she ensnared Michael.  Both actors serve their purpose but wish they had been given more to do.

When talking about the film after its end with an audience member I eventually concluded that the reason Mary and Michael cheated on each other was because being with other people didn’t feel like the system marriage had become and they could be free to be themselves.  When their affairs began to feel like what they ran away from they ran to each other because only the other person could understand.

In the end, they made a commitment to each other, compromised that commitment and then compromised again just so they could have passion again.  It may not be the foundation of marriage but it is an exaggerated example of just how many forms love can come in.  Maybe the best version is to truly love yourself but then again disconnecting is how the whole mess started.  So maybe like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop the world may never know.  I will say it was good to look at marriage in a realistic way for awhile no matter how broken it was.  Hopefully audiences feel the same way too.