The Lovers (2017)

A delicate, deadpan comic fable, as if someone gave Boccaccio a camera and an indie film budget.

"The Lovers" keeps folding, changing and evolving, but stays to its central theme, exploring two uncomfortably real characters who can't get out of the way of each other or themselves.

Jacobs has delivered a two-handed character study and, in this mission, he is handily assisted by his two powerful leads.

Two fine performances anchor this half-funny, half-brutal story of a midlife marriage in crisis.

It's the kind of thinking person's relationship comedy that you don't exactly laugh at but admire for its brutal honesty.

It's tempting to read this as a younger generation's condemnation of its parents' me-first indulgence, and an affirmation of familial unity by an unblinking, accusatory - but not histrionic - look at its opposite.

Jacobs has upended the classic rom-com template and delivered a film about the emotional distance between two people who still feel some fondness for one another in absentia.

A random collection of observations about marriage, betrayal and whatever it is that allows couples to maintain a collegial interest in one another after everything else is gone.

"The Lovers" is the sort of respectable flop that has you asking yourself over and over, why isn't this working?

It takes a juicy premise and two fine actors -- including the too-scarce, always-welcome Debra Winger -- and fails to do much with them.

Jacobs may be pessimistic about marriage á la mode, but he retains some qualified optimism for his characters, with a bruised tenderness for the story's central quartet, all flawed and flailing but trying, somehow, to move forward.

A self-sabotaging, strangely superficial portrait of a philandering couple, weighing the pros and cons of trading spouses.