Marriage Story had three things going for it when I first learned about it. (1) It stars Scarlett Johansson, who is pretty much always wonderful. (2) I consider movies about relationships falling apart to be research (not personal). (3) It was featured at SLIFF, which means nothing about its quality necessarily, but if it's terrible, it's at least going to be interesting to talk about. The movie is titled Marriage Story, and my initial thought before watching it (but after seeing the trailer) was that it might be more aptly titled Separation Story. It really is a marriage story, though. But it is a separation story too.
Scarlett and Adam Driver play Nicole and Charlie. They live in New York with their young son, until Nicole -- who has always wanted to move back to California, where she's from -- takes an acting job that requires her to be on the west coast. Her show gets picked up, so she stays longer. She enrolls the son in school for the next school year, since Charlie is busy in New York producing his new Broadway play. And things start to fall apart. That's how it's a separation story.
The marriage part comes through each of their conversations with their divorce lawyers, and their conversations with each other. The picture starts to come into focus about how things went so wrong between them, and how neither of them noticed it happening while it did.
Bottom line: well done, and a little close to home.
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