![]() Perhaps no film-maker has covered the tonal bases quite as comprehensively as Woody Allen, whose own romantic failings have long bled into his work – never more scarringly than in Husbands and Wives, an exhilaratingly acidic anatomy of two bourgeois New York couples in crisis, as the breakup of one exerts an anxious domino effect on the other. That complication alone makes The Lovers a warmer entry than many in the canon of marital-strife studies, the best of which range in approach from elegiac sentimentality to all-out emotional assault. ![]() Starring Tracy Letts and a resurgent Debra Winger, it tells the story of a middle-aged husband and wife on the verge of divorce, having each maintained long-term extramarital affairs – only to find their love unexpectedly rekindled by the possibility of permanent separation. ![]() Azazel Jacobs’ The Lovers, which opens in the US today, follows in this noble, thorny tradition. And while brittle marital dissections and breakup dramas will never be advertised as date movies, they can be just as comforting or even cathartic for the audience – reflecting as they do the imperfection of every relationship, acknowledging real life after the happy ending. ![]() You don’t see the opposite advice plastered across many posters, but the “maybe don’t see it with someone you love” genre is a rich and varied one: as long as there is Hollywood romance, there will be more jaded film-makers out to dismantle its illusions. ![]()
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