Review: Between Us

Nothing exposes the cracks or accelerates the demise of a relationship more than marriage. Take writer-director Rafael Palacio Illingworth's Between Us, which details the bleakest after hours of a young couple's marriage.

The couple in question are Dianne (Olivia Thirlby) and Henry (Ben Feldman), who have been in a six-year relationship. Gone are the days when love consumed and fueled their beings. They're now mired in the mundane - getting groceries together, giving each other a perfunctory kiss on the lips before going to sleep. Yet they're together and united in their indignation at the pressure they feel from their families to get married, get a mortgage, have babies, and be boring people - "living how they want us to live," Henry notes.

Somehow the two decide to get married to get rid of the pressure - after all, it's no big deal - and troubles that had been contentedly lying dormant are awakened. Dianne, despite her bohemian attitude, wants stability whilst struggling filmmaker Henry is increasingly paranoid about relinquishing his no-consequences lifestyle to an all strings attached future. Their respective concerns are further stoked by their willingness to explore some sexual temptations - a seductive musician (Analeigh Tipton) for him and a pair of financially stable men (Scott Haze, Adam Goldberg) for her - on what should have been their first night as husband and wife.

When Between Us pays heed to its title and narrows its focus on Henry and Dianne, the film is an unflinching and often brutal observation of how doubts and complacency can fester and destroy. It's a little less successful and more rote when it expands its attention to the couple's potential infidelities, but both Feldman and especially Thirlby make their characters' vacillations and motivations wholly relatable and believable.

Between Us

Directed by: Rafael Palacio Illingworth

Written by: Rafael Palacio Illingworth

Starring: Olivia Thirlby, Ben Feldman, Analeigh Tipton, Scott Haze, Adam Goldberg, Alison Sudol, Lesley Ann Warren, Peter Bogdanovich