DVD Review: Marie and Bruce

Darling, do you find the word “darling” annoying? I imagine you will
by the time you’re finished watching Marie and Bruce, darling.
In fact, darling, you’ll probably want to circulate a petition in
favour of having the word excised from the English language entirely.
You see, before Marie and Bruce became an odd little movie, it
was a play by Wallace Shawn (co-writer/star of My Dinner with
Andre)—a fact that the film’s stylized, idiosyncratic,
“darling”-heavy dialogue makes apparent pretty early on. As they weave
their way through what could be the last day in their now-passionless
marriage, Marie (Julianne Moore) and Bruce (Matthew Broderick) say
things people would never say, in ways that people would never say
them. (Shares Bruce, conversationally: “You can be sort of a cunt,
darling, at certain times, when you refuse to fuck me.”) And yet, once
youget past the annoying “darlings” and get used to Shawn and
director/co-scripter Tom Cairns’ simultaneously stilted and poetic
dialogue, there’s lots to admire about this film, which handily conveys
the disgust, disappointment and disconnect that cause a marriage to
falter, the tiny gestures that keep it going—and just how hilariously
boring most party and dinner chatter can be.

This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2009.