The Frame

Pointless and dull tale of infidelity. You’d think a story about two couples whose close friendship is threatened by the affair of one husband with the other man’s wife, and the reciprocal spiteful affair between the other pair would at least hold a perverse interest, but it doesn’t. It tries to be deep and is boring, it tries to be passionate and is lifeless, in the end it tries to be noble and is just ineffective. It’s based off of short stories, which explains some of the lack of exposition, but the best short stories glean vitality from starting in media res, and gain thoughtful ambiguity from their lack of resolution. I can’t claim to judge the stories beneath this film because I haven’t read them, but the starts in media res and gives no motivation for the first affair, and ends with the first couple’s reconciliation, again with no discernable reason other than the filmmakers thought it ought to end that way. Granted, I’m all for stopping affairs and reconciling with spouses if that’s possible, but in terms of this story and these characters, it didn’t make any narrative or motivational sense at all, especially since we learn too little about the characters to care what happens to them. Good cast (Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts, Peter Krouse, Laura Dern) totally wasted.
Well Below Average