'Married Life'

Rating:

BY GENE SEYMOUR | gene.seymour@newsday.com

March 7, 2008

There's little in "Married Life," Ira Sachs' burnished blend of psychological suspense thriller and comedy of manners, that those devoted to the storytelling of John Updike, Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock haven't encountered before. Subdued passions, domestic guilt, thwarted yearnings and devious behavior are, to varying degrees, hallmarks of these otherwise divergent artists.

And these aspects seem especially appropriate to this story, set at the hinge of the 1940s and 1950s, in which Harry and Pat Allen, a seemingly contented suburban couple played by Chris Cooper and Patricia Clarkson, are stalked by the specter of marital upheaval.

Harry, bespectacled and circumspect, is romantically involved with Kay (Rachel McAdams), a sultry, yet bookish war widow to whom he makes the mistake of introducing his best friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan). Richard is a shrewd, congenial cad who conspires to shift Kay's attentions away from poor Harry - who, by the way, wants to spare poor Pat the emotional pain of his departure by giving her some toxically adjusted doses of digestive medicine.

What separates Sachs' handling of such material from Hitchcock's or Sirk's is a cool, dry tone that mutes, but in no way overrides, the smoldering tension. His four principal actors are such worthy vehicles for sustaining the throbbing pace and shifting moods of this chamber piece that it's difficult to single anyone out.

Brosnan continues to put impressive distance between his 007 persona and his still-underrated gifts for subtlety and shadow; attributes that McAdams also brings to a role that could have easily drifted into cipher-hood. But "Married Life's" prevailing emotional complexities are under the assured control of Cooper, who can wear a character's stressed dualities as if they were part of an impeccably-tailored suit, and Clarkson, whose capacity for generating erotic heat approaches McAdams' own.

MARRIED LIFE (PG-13). This impeccably acted chamber piece, set in the late '40s, is a romantic quadrangle involving a stockbroker ( Chris Cooper) who'd rather kill his wife (Patricia Clarkson) than deal with the fallout of his affair with a young war widow (Rachel McAdams). His best friend ( Pierce Brosnan) is the rogue element. 1:30 (sexual material). At the Landmark Sunshine Theaters, Manhattan.