THE STORY – Eve was a rocker in her early twenties but gave it up to be a full-time mom, while her husband, Scott, poured his energy into his own music… while frequently pouring himself too many drinks. Now an empty-nester, Eve wonders if it’s possible to return to her art. She’s certainly encouraged by a hunky music critic whose interest seems more than professional.
THE CAST – Morena Baccarin, Benjamin Bratt, Edward Burns, Minnie Driver, Brian d’Arcy James, Julianna Margulies, Gretchen Mol, Campbell Scott & Patrick Wilson
THE TEAM – Edward Burns (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 117 Minutes
Ever since films could talk, they’ve been obsessed with rich, good-looking (white, it almost goes without saying) people and their marital problems. People go to the cinema to escape their humdrum lives, and seeing wealthy people going through similar struggles can be reassuring in some ways; not even money can save you from a philandering spouse! Woody Allen essentially perfected the genre in the ’70s and ’80s with masterpieces like “Annie Hall” and “Hannah and Her Sisters,” and since then, other filmmakers have put their stamp on the genre in different ways. Edward Burns began his career as a writer-director with this kind of film, “The Brothers McMullen,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival and became the first film ever released by Fox Searchlight. Nearly 30 years later, he’s revisiting the genre that made him with “Millers in Marriage,” assembling quite the cast: Juliana Marguiles, Patrick Wilson, Gretchen Mol, Benjamin Bratt, Minnie Driver, Campbell Scott, Morena Baccarin, and Brian d’Arcy James.
You can see why Burns would attract such talent to this project, even aside from his history. The characters in “Millers in Marriage” are well-drawn without being so bogged down with detail that the actors have no room to explore. The discussions they have are likely relevant to the actors’ own lives (since they’re of the same age and class as the characters), and the use of flashbacks within flashbacks allows them to play the characters at different points in their lives. The film follows the three Miller siblings as they navigate their middle-aged relationships: Eve (Mol), a former rocker and current empty nester whose husband (Wilson) is always either out on tour with the bands he manages or drinking himself stupid; Maggie (Marguiles), a successful novelist whose novelist husband (Scott) hasn’t written anything in years; and Andy (Burns), an artist whose new relationship with Renee (Driver) is threatened by the reappearance of his former wife Tina (Baccarin).
Each sibling has recently been tempted by an affair. Eve, adrift since her kids have left for college, has been considering returning the affections of a music critic (Bratt) who wants to interview her about her heyday. Andy is completely thrown off by his ex reappearing with amorous intentions after she suddenly left their marriage of 15 years, especially since Renee was her former friend. Maggie, reaching her limit with her husband’s antisocial tendencies, inability to write, and passive-aggressive feedback to her writing, has started looking at the local handyman (d’Arcy James) hanging around their country house. Can any of them find fulfillment?
That’s it. That’s the whole movie: a bunch of vaguely connected 50-60-somethings fretting about their spouses, dithering over whether to have an affair and talking to each other about how and why they’re so screwed up and unable to be happy. It’s a paper-thin plot that Burns tries to beef up by including flashbacks to previous events that flesh out the characters and their backstory instead of just having them talk about their past. The way the narrative curlicues around is both the film’s greatest asset and biggest weakness: Some of these flashbacks are so long that they threaten to stall whatever little momentum the film can create, but they’re also the film’s only real source of personality, as it’s so bland that it perfectly matches the many shades of beige the siblings prefer in their interior decorating. The cast commits and turns in very fine work, as you’d expect from actors of this caliber. None of them can turn in their best work, though, saddled with one-note characters spouting facile pop psychology whenever they’re not acting conflicted about the bad situations they’ve gotten themselves into.
There’s nothing exactly wrong with any of this, but it leaves you wondering what was the point. “Millers in Marriage“ is the blandest of yuppie cinema. Burns’s screenplay lacks the biting wit of someone like Nicole Holofcener (“You Hurt My Feelings“), and his direction lacks the energetic pop of someone like Nancy Meyers (“It’s Complicated”), two filmmakers who have also made their name with exactly this kind of film. With nothing of interest happening on screen and a cast of talented actors putting in fine but unmemorable work as characters so myopic they can’t think of anything outside their own experience, one has to ask why we’re still making this kind of film. We shouldn’t condemn a whole genre just based on one bland example of it, but “Millers in Marriage“ is such a whiff of a film that you can’t help but want to do so.
