* * * 1/2

Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson, Rachel McAdams. Screenplay by Ira Sachs and Oren Moverman, based on the novel by John Bingham. Directed by Ira Sachs. Rated PG-13. 90 minutes. Sony Pictures Classics.

Is it ever truly possible to know the goings on inside the hearts and minds of those we share our lives, loves and beds with? Not likely, says Married Life, a grown-up new romantic roundelay on marriage and commitment undone by adultery and a dash of murder in a stylish film that boasts four original characters wrestling with the doldrums of long-term commitment, compatibility and the comic notion that killing one’s supportive wife just may hurt her less than leaving her.

Set in the post-war, suburban 1940s and adapted from a period novel by John Bingham, director Ira Sachs fashions a quietly thrilling little picture about the rythmic ups and downs of the male ego—and heart—that efficiently explores the minds of men, both single and married, and what drives their impulses for love and stability, positing marriage as "a mild kind of mental illness" in need of remedy.

The trouble with Harry Allen (Chris Cooper) is beautiful young blonde Kay (Rachel McAdams), who supplies the bored husband with a much-needed spark that undermines his staid companionship with wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson), who believes love in marriage a fallacy and sex is what keeps things afloat.

Enter best friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan), a Manhattan playboy who falls instantly in lust with vision Kay and, at Harry’s ill-advised suggestion to keep her company, begins to orchestrate a seduction of his own. In the meantime, Harry decides to spare Pat the pain of being dumped by poisoning her, the act of which the good husband wrestles with and provides considerable suspense. Pat, on the other hand, played with a sly poker face by Clarkson, has a few tricks up her own sleeve and may not be as committed to the marriage as Harry assumes.

As a comedy of (ill) manners, what sounds like farce is directed by Sachs with acute attention to allowing this actors to feel through this emotional labyrinth and reach their logical ends. Married Life, for all its machinations, is about four likable and intriguing characters who surprise us right up to the final scene, a nice-guys-finish-first coda to a movie that asserts, however comically, that it is impossible to be happy at the expense of the unhappy.

With a fine sense of time and place, Married Life is a smoothly carpentered, old-fashioned film that doesn’t peddle its era out in front of its characters, but instead effectively incorporates its cars, clothing and sets into a most modern-feeling quadrangle of love and deception.

Platinum-tressed McAdams makes it easy to see why anyone would fall for Kay, capturing equal measures goodness of heart and girl-next-door comeliness. And while a dashing Brosnan is perfectly cast as narrator and duplicitous cad Richard, whose drive to possess unwitting Kay ultimately reveals a need for love, the expert Clarkson reveals layers to Pat that speak wisely on wifely marital strife and compromise.

Yet it is a remarkable Cooper who layers his character with considerable pathos in the film’s final reels. He did this to great effect in an Oscar-winning turn in Adaptation, and the always fascinating character actor does similar dramatic reveals here. After Harry matter-of-factly mounts his premeditation only to face a reversal of romantic fortunes, he has a poignant reality-check with young Kay, a comeuppance leading to an astonishing moment of realization opposite a bathroom mirror. Transforming the film’s prior and lightly farcical elements into sharp emotional focus, the weight of Harry’s actions finally catch up with him and Cooper allows previously selfish Harry to confront his follies.

Highly recommended.

- Lee Shoquist