Themes: Crumbling Marriages, Families in Crisis, Breakups and Divorces
Main Cast: Albert Finney, Diane Keaton, Karen Allen, Peter Weller, Dana Hill
Release Year: 1982
Country: US
Run Time: 124 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Director Alan Parker and writer Bo Goldman chronicle the emotional disintegration of an unhappy marriage. Albert Finney and Diane Keaton play George and Faith Dunlap, a seemingly happily married couple living with their four daughters in a converted farmhouse in Marin County, California. George is inwardly empty and decides to have an affair with Sandy (Karen Allen), who has doubts about how long their affair will last. Faith is also suffering from ennui and takes up with Frank Henderson (Peter Weller), the contractor for the Dunlap's tennis court. Frank, after discovering about Faith's affair, is in a confused state: he wants to leave and live with Sandy but doesn't want his wife to date other men and demands the love of his daughters -- all of whom now detest him. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Review
Alan Parker's film about the downside of the Marin County lifestyle of the period that Cyra McFadden had satirized in Serial tracks the course of a disintegrating marriage. While the subject is the stuff of a thousand TV movies, and it can't be said that the film finds much new to say, Keaton and Finney raise the tone well above the usual fare, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Bo Goldman is a careful observer of the difficult details of divorce. The film is somewhat skewed in the direction of Finney's father and husband, and the actor plays this loving, blundering, self-pitying character with an undertone of imminent anarchy that gives the film its edge. Keaton is equally good in a less meaty part, but one feels the absence of any compelling attempt to identify what went wrong, though few films are willing to put an audience through the kind of pain Ingmar Bergman put onscreen in the classic Scenes From a Marriage (1973). Casting Peter Weller as Keaton's boyfriend seems a little gimmicky, his don't-mess-with-me persona adding extra conflict to an already fraught situation. But Finney's tennis court conflagration with him is a sadly fascinating scene, a metaphor for the territoriality of marriage, and the explosion of a West Coast Lear who has finally grasped the implications of his actions. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Viveka Davis - Jill; Tracey Gold - Marianne; Tina Yothers - Molly; George Murdock - French DeVoe; Leora Dana - Charlotte DeVoe; Robert Ackerman - Waiter; Michael Alldredge - Officer Knudson; Robert Costanzo - Leo Spinelli; Lou Cutell - Willard; Nancy Fish - Joanne; Georgann Johnson - Isabel; O-Lan Jones - Countergirl; Ken Kimmins - Maitre D'; Irving Metzman - Howard Katz; Edwina Moore - Reporter; Hector Morales - Mexican Man; Bill Reddick - Priest; Jeremy Schoenberg - Timmy; Morgan Upton - Photographer; David Landsberg - Scott Gruber; James Cranna - Harold; Eunice Suarez - Mexican Woman; Kathryn Trask - Nurse; April Webster; Juliet Taylor; Jan Dunn; Stephen Morrell - Rick
Credit
W. Stewart Campbell - Art Director, Juliet Taylor - Casting, Kristi Zea - Costume Designer, Raymond L. Greenfield - First Assistant Director, Alan Parker - Director, Gerry Hambling - Editor, Stuart Millar - Executive Producer, Edgar J. Scherick - Executive Producer, Geoffrey Kirkland - Production Designer, Ned Kopp - Production Designer, Nancy Giebink - Production Designer, Michael Seresin - Cinematographer, Alan Marshall - Producer, Bob Nelson - Set Designer, Doug von Koss - Set Designer, David MacMillan - Sound/Sound Designer, Bo Goldman - Screenwriter, Alan Parker - Screenwriter
