THE LOVERS

1/2 R, 94 minutes. Starts Friday at Madison Art Cinemas. Azazel Jacobs’ “The Lovers” is a complex character study of long-term relationships that takes a clever premise — what if you were cheating on your lover, with your spouse? — and uses it to explore the nuances and ultimate truths of long term relationships. The film is anchored by a duo of powerhouse performances from Debra Winger and Tracy Letts, who play married couple Mary and Michael, with an arch sophistication mixed with genuine vulnerability. Mary and Michael have slipped into a marital mundanity, co-existing as cordial roommates who barely speak to each other, rarely listen, and seem more awkward around each other than anything else. We aren’t given much history to their relationship, but as we know it to be now, each spouse pours their energy into their extra-marital lover. For him, it’s a kooky, needy dancer, Lucy (Melora Walters), while she has a silver fox of a writer, Robert (Aiden Gillen). But even those relationships have hit the skids in some ways. Play has become work in their affairs, and their passionate, emotional lovers require a certain amount of upkeep that Mary and Michael don’t seem to be willing to give. Suddenly, the person they sleep next to becomes more and more appealing, and a wild, secretive affair is born, complete with lunchtime romps. “The Lovers” finds itself in its moments of detail, specificity and stillness. Long pauses punctuate the action and serve as punchlines for the often wordless visual humor. Both Letts and Winger expertly express their characters’ mental state physically, whether frazzled or downtrodden at their less-than-exciting jobs, fraught with uneasiness or comfortably tender with each other. There are times when it can feel a bit too mannered, too tight, and you wish for the film to cut loose a bit. When it does, during a visit with their son Joel (Tyler Ross) and his girlfriend Erin (Jessica Sula), the tension cracks in unexpected ways, though the break is a welcome relief. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service