RIALTO DISTRIBUTION PRESENTS
MARRIED LIFE
NZ Marketing & Publicity enquiries:
Adria Buckton, Trigger Marketing & Publicity
09 834 33 48 / 021 498 086
NZ Theatrical Sales enquiries:
Andrew Shreeve, Rialto Distribution
09 376 9166
Runtime: TBA
Censors Rating:TBA
New Zealand Release Date: TBA
A strong blend of suspense, star-crossed romance, and wry comedy of manners, Married Life is an unconventional human drama about the irresistible power and utter madness of love.
Harry (Chris Cooper) decides he must kill his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson) because he loves her too much to let her suffer when he leaves her. Harry and his much-younger girlfriend Kay (Rachel McAdams) are head over heels in love, but his best friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan) wants to win Kay for himself.
As Harry implements his awkward plans for murdering his wife, the other characters are occupied with their own deceptions. Like Harry, they are overwhelmed by their passions. but still struggle to avoid hurting others.
Married Life is an uncommonly adult film that surprises and confounds expectations. While it plays with mystery and intrigue, its ultimate concern is: “What is married life?”
In its sly way, Married Life poses perceptive questions about the seasonal discontents and unforeseen joys of all long-term relationships.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Writer/director Ira Sachs (Forty Shades of Blue, Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner,2005) is an ardent film buff, with a particular love for 1940s and 1950s movies, particularly ones starring Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. “What I like about those movies is that the dramas can be so extreme and outrageous and yet they deal with people’s personal lives in ways that communicate powerfully with audiences,” says Sachs. “I wanted to do a film that would talk frankly and directly about the complexities and intricacies of marriage and intimate life—and I thought that in today’s film context, a movie like this could be a fresh way to do so.”
Looking for a story to adapt, Sachs pored over stacks of little-known mystery and pulp novels, until he came upon John Bingham’s Five Roundabouts to Heaven. “It was exactly what I was looking for—a really great story about being married,” he says. “I thought this story could be a very intriguing vehicle for me to explore what it’s like to share a bed with someone, over a long period of time.”
When Sachs began working with his co-writer, Oren Moverman, they agreed that the film should have a playful tone. “I tried to signal that right away, in the credit sequence,” says Sachs. “The credits give a sense that there is whimsy in the very serious things to follow. I wanted the audience to understand that they don’t need to take every action too literally. Now that doesn’t deny the serious nature of what happens between these characters, and I certainly don’t want to undercut the effect of going through these experiences with them, I just don’t want the audience to over-think the story.”
“Every time I describe the film in a one-sentence line—people smile,” Sachs continues. “And there’s a reason for that. It’s over-the-top. A gentle, middle-aged man who falls in love decides to kill his wife because divorce would cause her too much pain. You could maybe find it hard to understand the decision our protagonist, Harry (Chris Cooper) makes, but that’s looking at the story too literally. It’s really more of a metaphor. I find Harry very familiar—all too many people have difficulty choosing themselves over their marriage. All the same, he’s not an easy character to make sympathetic, and I needed someone to play him that the audience would always empathize and identify with. And Chris Cooper makes a very good Everyman.”
Harry’s assumption that his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson) can’t live without him is based on a complete misunderstanding of who she is. “There’s immense narcissism to his actions,” says Sachs. “He considers himself of such importance that he thinks Pat would be better off dead than without him—and he’s totally wrong. He’s lost and he doesn’t know his way out, but instead of choosing an honest way, he chooses a dishonest one and that leads him into a lot of trouble. But as it turns out, Harry turns out to not be a particularly good murderer, which is part of the humor of the film.”
“I think Harry’s big flaw is that he expects too much,” says Cooper. “When Kay comes to meet Harry and Richard at the restaurant, it caps what Harry wants all the time. In Noel Coward’s words, he’s looking for that ‘first, fine careless rapture.’ I think he had it with his wife, but it didn’t last, and now Harry is carried away by his curious need for something more. He could be going through what we all call a mid-life crisis.”
“Harry starts out in the film like a young man in love,” says Sachs. “He’s like a kid in a candy store. And then things get more serious for him because adult life is not like that adolescent joy from first love—there are too many complications that spring from all the history that’s come before.”
Sachs sees Harry’s friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan) as the most fun character in the film. “He’s intelligent, he’s charming, he has a wicked, dry sense of humor,” says Sachs, “he gives pleasure to everyone around him. And Pierce Brosnan brings lightness and a mischievous energy to Richard, while also showing you his vulnerability. He makes him a cad you hopefully will come to love.”
Richard is involved in what might be seen as the biggest betrayal in the film—trying to seduce and steal away Kay (Rachel McAdams), the love of Harry’s life and the woman he sees as his sole hope for happiness. “I’m not going to try to defend what Richard does,” says Sachs, “but this story is about how people pursue their desires, and each of these characters pursues them with great passion. And that’s not necessarily when people are the most kind to everyone around them. And to be honest, haven’t we all done things for ourselves at some point, rather than for the people we love?”
“Richard really is intoxicated by Kay,” says Brosnan, “but at the same time it’s his best friend, so there’s a little tug of guilt in his heart. But he doesn’t have any burden of conscience, that’s the mantra of Richard. He talks about the burden of conscience, but basically he wants Kay. Also, Harry and Pat are Richard’s only true friends—they really know him. And if Harry goes off with Kay, and breaks up his marriage, Richard loses everything.”
For the role of Kay, Sachs needed an actress who would leave no doubt about her ability to enchant Harry and Richard. “The whole drama turns on Kay,” says Sachs. “She’s the star in the middle of the universe between these two men. When Kay walks into the Cloud Room restaurant in the opening of the movie, you needed to have someone with whom these two men could believably fall in love with. Obviously Rachel McAdams has the loveliness, but more importantly, she has a mystery—and that’s what holds your interest. She’s very touching and sympathetic, but at the same time, she holds things back. There’s always something going on just under the surface.”
Kay is a character who has suffered an incredible amount of loss—her father died when she was young, and she recently lost both her mother and her husband. “She’s spent a lot of time with herself, and I think she’s lost touch with reality a little bit,” says McAdams. “I think she’s drawn to Harry because they’re both a little bit broken, and need mending—and they comfort each other.”
“Kay sees Harry as someone who can give her a home, security and love” says Sachs, “and that means economic security, strength, consistency, and a kind of paternal comfort. It’s a feeling of paternal love that she has transformed into a romantic love for Harry. I think that at the start of the film she believes that she has met the man of her life. Unfortunately, she then meets a man who might be even better. I think things would have been good for her and Harry, but when shemeets Richard, it suddenly seems the world could not only be safe, but big.” “When Richard comes along,” says McAdams, “Kay starts to feel the wind in her hair and the leather seats in his car. He brings her out of her shell.”
Harry’s wife, Pat (Patricia Clarkson), is also someone who’s trying to find her way in life. “She doesn’t know what she wants,” says Sachs. “She’s in great conflict. She’s someone who has come to the point in her life where she feels the need for a little more, but she can’t make a decision.” “Pat has lived a rather conventional life,” says Clarkson, “but she isn’t conventional herself. She thinks people have a self-deceiving attitude about love, and that it’s really only about sex. So if she fulfills that, she’s fulfilling her wifely duties. I do think she has a real relationship with Harry—it isn’t some false marriage—but I don’t think it was ever a deep, romantic love. And there’s something to be said for a woman, particularly at that point in her life when she has to look down the barrel of growing old with her husband, wanting that as well.”
“A lot of people, particularly women, identify with Pat more than any of the other characters in the movie,” says Sachs. “She seems like someone you know. And Patty imbues her with an earthiness, and a wry, loving nature. Pat’s full of life, passion and tenderness, and that gives her such poignancy, as she is the woman who Harry is plotting to kill.”
Both Harry and Pat are characters that are frightened of their own needs. “They both feel guilty,” says Sachs. “I believe on some level it’s because of the formal structure of married life. It’s a very monolithic way of living, and I think the people inside these monoliths are struggling. I think that anyone who is married or in a relationship has some understanding of that. You can’t point a finger at these characters if you’re being honest with yourself.”
“The most important thing for me was that the tone of Married Life not be a cynical one,” says Sachs, “because I don’t feel cynical at all about long-term relationships. I just feel that they’re always a great, even noble, challenge. You could say it’s a humanist approach to a genre story, so in the end, it becomes perhaps not really a genre picture at all. Everyone has some level of good, bad, and beauty in them.”
“Harry’s put Pat and his relationship with her in a box,” says Cooper. “He just settled and didn’t really appreciate how much he had. It’s a fatal flaw in a lot of relationships. Couples have to constantly work at keeping their relationships interesting and fresh. And I think Harry lost sight of that.”
“Marriage is a struggle, and it takes work,” says Brosnan. “You may be challenged in life when you least expect it. And this film makes you ask yourself: ‘Can you do the honorable thing?’”
“This film sheds a lot of light on the complications of relationships,” says McAdams. “You don’t always feel what you’re supposed to feel, and you’re not always the person that other people think you are. You’re not even always the person you think you are, until push comes to shove and your character is tested.”
“What I hope the movie does is make people feel less alone,” says Sachs. “When you’re in bed and you’re feeling slightly alienated from your wife or loved one, you can feel a certain kind of distance that is painful. And I hope that people will realize that they are just like the person in the next house, who’s also coping with these kinds of questions.”
“Harry starts off in the beginning of the movie knowing the least about the other characters,” Sachs continues, “and by the end he knows the most. He’s the one who knows all the secrets. He has come to wisdom, and through that wisdom has the ability to love.”
ABOUT THE CAST
CHRIS COOPER (Harry Allen)
One of the most respected character actors of our time, Chris Cooper was recognized in 2003 with an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of John Laroche in Columbia Pictures Adaptation, written by Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich) and directed by Spike Jonze. The film, loosely based on Susan Orlean’s novel, The Orchid Thief, followed a sexually frustrated screenwriter’s attempts to adapt Orlean’s anecdotal novel for the screen. Cooper was also recognized for his performance in this film by numerous critics associations including the Broadcast Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and Toronto Film Critics Association.
Cooper recently completed production on two films. Alongside Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, and Jason Bateman, Cooper co-stars in the Universal film The Kingdom, which tells the story of a team of U.S. government agents who are sent to investigate the bombing of an American facility in the Middle East. Directed by Peter Berg, the film will be released on September 28th.
Most recently, Cooper starred in the Universal Pictures filmBreach, playing the title role of Robert Hanssen, a renowned operative for the FBI who was found guilty of spying for the Russians. Cooper received extraordinary praise from movie critics around the country for his deft performance. The film was directed by Billy Ray (Shattered Glass) and co-stars Ryan Phillipe.
In 2006, Cooper also had strong supporting roles in Sony Classics’ Capote, Universal’s Jarhead,for director Sam Mendes, and Warner Bros.’ Syriana, for writer and director Stephen Gaghan.
In 2005, Cooper re-teamed with director and friend John Sayles in New Market Film’s Silver City, a political drama and murder mystery which chronicled the story of a small town in Colorado and the events leading up to a local election. The impressive cast included Maria Bello, Thora Birch, Richard Dreyfuss, Tim Roth, Daryl Hannah and Billy Zane. The film was screened at the Toronto Film Festival.
In 2003, Cooper starred in the Universal Pictures film, Seabiscuit based on the best-selling novel. Cooper was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award for his portrayal of Seabiscuit’s trainer, Tom Smith. Seabiscuitwas directed by Gary Ross and also starred Tobey Macguire and Jeff Bridges. In the same year, Cooper was nominated for an Emmy Award for his supporting performance in the HBO film My House in Umbria starring Maggie Smith.
In 2002, Cooper was seen in The Bourne Identity for Universal Pictures in the strong supporting role as the mastermind of the CIA’s controversial clandestine operation, Treadstone. In 2004, he appeared in the flashback scenes in the second installment, The Bourne Supremacy.
In 2000 Cooper portrayed Colonel Burwell opposite Mel Gibson in Sony Pictures The Patriot, a Revolutionary War epic directed by Roland Emmerich. In the same year, Cooper appeared with Jim Carrey in the comedy Me, Myself and Irene, for directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly.
In 1999 Cooper received a Screen Actor’s Guild Award for his supporting performance alongside Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening in Dreamworks’ Academy Award winning film, American Beauty. In a stunning and dramatic display, Cooper portrayed a stern ex-Marine Colonel who persistently monitored his son’s every move.
In 1999 Cooper starred as the father of an amateur rocket enthusiast in the acclaimed coming-of-age drama October Sky, which was screened at the 1999 Venice and Deauville Film Festivals with great notice. He had previously earned a Best Actor nomination in 1997 from the Independent Spirit Awards for his work in John Sayles’ Lone Star. Nearly a decade earlier, Cooper made his feature film debut in Sayles’ Matewan.
Among his film credits are Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer,Great Expectations,A Time to Kill,Money Train,This Boy’s Life, Guilty by Suspicion andCity of Hope.
On the small screen, he has had roles in a number of long form projects, including the miniseries Lonesome Dove, and Return to Lonesome Dove. He most recently starred in HBO’s Breast Men, and includes among his other credits Alone,OneMoreMountain, Ned Blessing, Bed of Lies,Darrow,In Broad Daylight, A Little Piece of Sunshine, Law and Order and Journey to Genius.