Married Life (2008)

Writer-director Ira Sachs puts marriage under the ultimate strain in Married Life. Infidelity? That's nothing. Try a husband determined to kill his wife because it would be inhumane simply to dump her for another woman. Thanks to the cast, Sachs' cheeky premise gets dramatic traction to complement its dark humor. Chris Cooper plays the husband, the ultimate in misguided romantics, and Patricia Clarkson plays his wife, who claims to believe that love is about sex. Pierce Brosnan plays Cooper's rakish friend, also the film's narrator, and Rachel McAdams is the young woman that catches both men's attention. In adapting John Bingham's novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven, Sachs nimbly plucks a few Hitchcockian strings while regarding the trust and tradeoffs of married life.

[For Groucho's interview with Ira Sachs, click here.]