Breaking up is hard to do
H ERE is a neat, little slow burn of a comedy that upends the cheating-spouse narrative; even its title is cheekily misleading. Debra Winger and Tracy Letts are terrific as Mary and Michael, a long-married couple who have quietly settled into respective affairs with dishy and devoted younger partners: She’s with writer Robert (Aidan Gillen of “Game of Thrones”), and he’s seeing dance instructor Lucy (Melora Walters).
Writer/director Azazel Jacobs (“Terri”) wisely keeps his dialogue sparse, letting Winger and Letts speak volumes with their actions and faces — and knowing that decades-married spouses need not articulate every thought. They’ve taken to living as companionable but slightly wary roommates, until the moment is nearly upon them to announce their respective decisions to split (they’ve independently both decided to break the news after an impending visit from their adult son, Joel, played by Tyler Ross).
Suddenly, something shifts, and they find themselves unaccountably, inconveniently infatuated with each other, even as they’re telling their secret significant others, “We finally have a real date!” When they wake up one morning in each other’s arms, they leap from the bed with alarm.
I don’t know when I’ve felt a more palpable sense of giddiness on-screen than watching Letts’ character chuckling to himself in his work cubicle at the absurdity of the situation, or Winger’s as she laughs discreetly at an in-joke text from her husband while she’s out with her lover. Robert and Lucy become inadvertent ball-and-chains, probing for signs of infidelity, while Mary and Michael’s son is excoriating his parents for their failing marriage.
It’s all a delightful mess, executed with a deft touch by Jacobs. Stories of middle-aged romance (or, god forbid, older than that) are still pretty few and far between at the movies, especially American ones; Letts and Winger make a resounding case that we need to see more of them.