This is an adaptation (by HBO and screening on Sky Atlantic in the UK) of a 1973 Ingmar Bergman classic. I had a feeling that creator (writer and director) Hagai Levi had gender swapped the story line (in the original it's the husband who has an affair) and placed some of the action in Israel (his name makes it obvious why and probably explains the casting of Oscar Isaac). The gender swap move is a neat one and immediately puts Chastain on the back foot with a big job of winning the viewer over. It's such a simple trick, but it's modern, interesting and immediately elevates it from the predictable.
To be honest there is nothing predictable about this at all. For a start the acting is so pitch perfect that you could easily be eavesdropping a real marriage breakdown and that makes it entirely uncomfortable from the get go.
And when I say the acting is pitch perfect I don't just mean 10/10, I mean better than that. Smarter than that. Realer than that. Were this a movie we would be looking at the two acting Oscars, no questions. It's like a lesson in acting.
So, that means it's boring then?
Nope.
Slow, I'll grant you that.
Intense. Indeed.
The cast list runs to 19 but this is really a two hander in which succesful businesswoman Mira (Jessica Chastain) and comparatively less succesful academic (and house husband) Jonathan split up over five intense hours.
There's virtually no music to lighten the mood, but when there is it's extremely well used.
It's not a lot of laughs. (It's Bergman). It really isn't. And it would play out extremely well on a theatre stage and yet, strangely, the direction is so superior that it doesn't for a second feel 'stagey' unlike, say, Fences.
I was captivated by this. It's so real and believable as Chastain and Isaac's marriage disintegrates, threatens to reboot, disintegrates again and generally gets into a right old mess.
This won't be everybody's cup of tea. But if you like a bit of misery and you adore great acting then tune in bro.
