What happens in a marital separation when one person moves on and the other is still committed? The power of the superb heartland drama The Killing of Two Lovers comes from its point of view on a failing marriage, told from the perspective of a cast-off husband holding out hope for reconciliation. It is a pure, exacting American indie, austere in its lonely, new West backdrop, potent in its sense of isolation, deliberate in its pace and sobering in its examination of marital decay. Courtesy of writer-director Robert Machoian, it is a masterful look at a fractured male ego in crisis, here a young husband still committed while his estranged seems determined to move on.
Set in the speck-on-the- map town of Kanosh, Utah—which even by modest small town standards is little more than a few streets, a gas station and a vast fields of emptiness surrounded by foothills — the picture has been beautifully lensed by cinematographer Ignacio Jiménez, whose depiction of claustrophobic desolation significantly amplifies the conundrum of separated husband and father David (Clayne Crawford, with great gravitas) after wife Nikki (Sepideh Moafi) decides they should not only live apart but also see other people.
Apart, in this case, means across the street, and as the picture opens David has moved back to his ramshackle childhood home with his aged father, leaving Nikki in the farmhouse down the block. A too-young married couple, they now have three children, including alienated teen daughter Jess (Avery Pizzuto).
Complicating matters is Nikki’s new boyfriend, Derek (Chris Coy), a colleague with whom we presume she’s had an affair that has evolved into something more, and who sneaks into the house to spend the night. But with David living across the street, nothing can be concealed. Cooperative as he’s been, there is an emasculated rage burning within, and in the opening scene he stands before her bed, gun drawn, in contemplation of, we presume, retribution.
Surprisingly, David has agreed to this trial uncoupling, and also to Nikki’s request to date around, presuming this freedom will eventually bring them back together. David, who ekes out a living as a handyman for hire and looks the part with a roughhewn visage, but this is merely a façade because beneath the gruff beats the heart of an emotional, sensitive artist. Nikki is a budding attorney with a future; David dreams of being a musician. They are not on equal footing.
Machoian effectively illustrates David’s curiously passive demeanor and surprising acceptance that another man—with more polish and a better truck—is courting his wife. He’s in it for the end game, he thinks, and has to let things run their course. This does not sit well with his children, and a remarkably painful confrontation scene set in a public park ranks with the best in any film about children splintered by divorce.
There are several such scenes, including a mid-picture moment where estranged husband and wife embark on a date night, thwarted, but not before David sings an acapella heartbreaker of a song he’s written, named I’m a Damned Fool, to Nikki in the truck’s cab.
But a man can only take so much. Like a ticking time bomb across 90 skillful minutes, Machoain expertly calibrates this collision of empathy and ego. David’s increasing helplessness at Nikki’s new terms, at times brazenly in his face and those of his children, comes to a breaking point by the final act, and a scene of explosive aggression—not exactly how we expect—has blunt force.
Shot in natural, penetrating close-ups, Crawford delivers a wounded, minimalist portrait of emasculation that believably depicts a rising cataclysm brewing beneath David’s amiable surface.
The Killing of Two Lovers is of the year’s very best films.
4 stars.
