Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Writer-director: Noah Baumbach, Netflix.
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta.
Notable acting from Johansson and Driver reinforces the pain of the divorce process. How they portray the excruciating hurt, and the rippling effects on those around them, is palpable.
Writer-director Baumbach’s unfeigned drama features award winners — and that augers well for this production. At the forefront are Nicole Barber (Johansson, Lost in Translation, Girl with a Pearl Earring) and Charlie Barber (Driver, Hungry Hearts, Star Wars sequel trilogy) whose marriage is at an end. They face unpleasant consequences of their disintegrating relationship. The grief of divorce unravels on the screen in a drama that’s phenomenally crafted.
Nicole is the star performer in Charlie’s theatre company. Their decision to separate has already been made. Their acrimony is obvious, and the procedures are mostly cordial. Aiming to avoid using lawyers, they want to split everything evenly. However, circumstances change after Nicole leaves New York for Los Angeles to shoot a television pilot and takes their son Henry with her.
This is when she realises the lost opportunities of a life not pursued in this city. Charlie, on the other hand, is obstinate in his commitment to the Big Apple. After all, this was where they’d lived as a family for the major part of Henry’s childhood.
Enter high-powered divorce attorney Nora Fanshaw (Dern, Rambling Rose, Wild, Jurassic Park) who is hired by Nicole because she wants to keep her child and stay in LA.
Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) has a script that also adds humour and some memorable moments include a fight between the couple that’s tangible proof of their distressed state of mind, an intense monologue from Nicole about how love disperses and a surprising musical performance from Charlie.
It’s a painful depiction of a couple orally exenterate one another.
