Last night while my RRBF was off working late so he can take time off to tour this fall, I watched We Don’t Live Here Anymore. Having just procured a subscription to Zip.ca, and actually kind of enjoying the random nature of the whole online movie renting thing, it’s nice to have a selection of movies on hand that you actually want to watch.
Annnywaaay. I’m wondering why so many movies about mature relationships end up depicting the bad ones. Emotionally challenging films like Closer and now this one, that seem to want to honestly portray a slice of modern married life almost always end up with characters either acting deplorably or saying some of the meanest things one could imagine coming out of the mouth of the opposite sex.
It seems to me that Hollywood has a two-fold approach to life, love and marriage: either people are miserable or they’re sickly and sweetly happy. Maybe it’s a response to the silly sitcom, the Everybody Loves Raymond approach to the world, not that I should be using that show as an example having honestly to say that I’ve never watched an episode of that show. Maybe it’s the need for films inspired by literature to be deep, intellectual and, well, Russian-literature-esque existential. Who knows? The film is well acted, well directed and extremely well written. My favourite line would have to be toward the end when Naomi Watts says to Peter Krause: “I’m not leaving because you were unfaithful. I’m leaving because I was unfaithful.”