“I guess you hoped it would be like marrying a hooker,” says Billy Crudup, grinning to brother-in-law David Duchovny about his ailing marriage to Julianne Moore. But cracks are appearing in his relationship too, with a broody Maggie Gyllenhaal debating the merits of living with an eternal teenager...
It’s a love-crisis comedy for the early mid-life set, so if you’ve been attached for a decent spell, you’ll well-relate to the self-insulating sarcasm (men) and earnest soliloquies (women) that can characterise the prattle of the sexes. If Coupling was the UK take on Friends, this is the Yank big-screener of Coupling, taking its frank angle on bedroom bickering to the Big Apple. It goes nowhere surprising, but feels real and the quality cast (perhaps snared because writer/director Bart Freundlich is Moore’s husband) give a potentially flyaway film emotional heft.
