THE LOVERS – Review

Debra Winger as Mary and Tracy Letts as Michael in THE LOVERS. Photo by Robb Rosenfeld. Courtesy of A24 ©

THE LOVERS is a slyly funny comedy in which Debra Winger and Tracy Letts play a long-married couple who are both secretly cheating with a lover. But they find their secret love affairs are unexpectedly complicated by a new sexual attraction – to each other.

Debra Winger and Tracy Letts deliver delightful performances as the long-married, philandering couple. Mary and Michael are on the far side of middle-age and the marriage has been dull routine for sometime. Their current lovers are younger, but not by that much. Mary is wooed by romantic Irish writer Robert (Aidan Gillen, GAME OF THRONES’ Littlefinger) with a sweet tenderness but he wants her to commit to him. Michael has his hands full with Lucy (Melora Walters), a fiery dance teacher, who also is tired of waiting for him to leave his marriage. Both Mary and Michael have promised their lovers they will tell their spouse they are ending the marriage, right after their college-aged son Joel (Tyler Ross) and girlfriend Erin (Jessica Sula) comes home to visit.

The audience learns all this early in the film. Writer/director Azazel Jacobs shows masterful skill with this film. Jacobs gives us a clever twist on bedroom farce comedy, by trading the young lovers usually at the center of all the bed-hopping, misunderstandings and slamming doors, for a couple on the far side of middle-age, sneaking off for afternoon quickies before returning to the humdrum of their stale marriage, tame suburban life and the routine of their middle manager jobs. The director toys with our ideas of fidelity, when a renewed attraction between the couple threatens to throw a wrench in the relationships with their lovers. Both truths and hypocrisy are subtly revealed as the story plays out.

THE LOVERS’ sly romantic comedy brings to mind Ernst Lubitsch’s clever parlor comedies. In lesser hands, this film could have been either broad, noisy slapstick or a tear-jerking melodrama about broken hearts. Jacobs avoids both, steering a course between sly humor and insightful observations. Where we expect loud and crazy, it goes subtle and clever. Where we expect weepy drama, we get thoughtful human insights and twists.

But all this heated behavior is going on right in the middle of dull suburbia, adding another comic edge to it.

It is not just Mary and Michael’s marriage that has gone stale but their whole lives. Their lives in suburbia are comfortable but not lavish, their jobs are routine and in career paths far different from they expected. Only their philandering provides the spark of life and excitement. Mary and Michael do not fight as much as avoid each other, carrying out the routines of life, like remembering to pick up toothpaste, but hardly connecting otherwise.

Jacobs seems to delight in the twists, but also uses the film to offer sharp insight on marriage, love, suburban life and jobs that are not the ones you planned on. Even the couple’s cheating has become routine, even though they still keep their affairs secret. Jacobs is clear-eyed and pulls no punch, but not cynical.

The director is aided greatly in navigating these tricky waters by Winger and Letts. Both are simply wonderful in their roles, bringing out nuance of character and details of the couple’s lives in each scene. They go to work at their dull jobs, slink around to grab a quickie, roll their eyes behind the back of their spouse, and soothe ruffled feelings of their lovers. Debra Winger and Tracy Letts are terrific in scenes together. Winger is a special standout, sexy and knowing at 61 and showing her acting chops are in full force yet.

Aidan Gillen and Melora Walters are also good, as patient, sensitive Robert and emotionally explosive Lucy, both tiring of waiting for Mary and Michael to split up. The amorous passion that Gillen’s Robert feels for Winger’s sweetly sexy Mary is convincing and touching. The desire Walters’ flighty Lucy feels for Letts’ charming, seductive Michael is equally believable. As modest as Mary’s and Michael’s lives are, both Robert and Lucy are in more limited financial circumstances.

This is not the kind of love story commonly seen on the big screen, built around a couple of suburban office workers approaching retirement age. Jacobs does not play cute with the love scenes, with no gauzy soft focus, and we see enough skin to make clear their age, and enough of their lovers’ bodies to see their comparative youth. On the other hand, Jacobs does not mock their age or late life passion, and is sympathetic to his characters’ desires and lost dreams, treating them with understanding.

How all these romantic entanglements will work out give this film both humor and insights on suburban life and long marriages, beyond the familiar bedroom farce plot. One gets the feeling the affairs have gone on so long they are nearly as routine as the marriage. Still, both Mary and Michael assume that the other spouse does not know about their secret lover, which may be true, and each assumes their spouse is faithful, which is obviously not true. Both Mary and Michael make endless “working late at the office” excuses, which offer the other a chance to sneak out but ironically neither thinks about the reason.

Through the course of the film, the director explores nature of long marriages, not just the potential for boredom in routine and familiarity but the shared memories and history, and the way a chance occurrence can remind a couple of what initially drew them together. It is such a spark that threatens to upset the plans in place, by reigniting the attraction between the married couple.

It is all delicious fun, as well as a clever and unexpected view inside a marriage, one that upends all sorts of assumptions. But the main delights of THE LOVERS are Debra Winger and Tracy Letts, running around and sparking sly sexy fun while offering insights on life, love, and long marriages.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars