Married/Unmarried

It took me several attempts to really watch it through, and for quite some time, I didn't really know what to think of it.

Now, that the noise around its impression on me has settled, I have to say: It's pretty well made, in certain aspects and, as disturbing the content and some dialogues are, many images stay in ones mind, I even dare to say, I'd compare the visual impression and camera work to Kubrick. No, it doesn't reach classics like 2001 or Clockwork Orange, as the setting and environment are not futuristic or surreal, but still, most scenes are really well chosen, designed, lighted and edited, producing a certain, minimalistic, clear visual style overall.

The storytelling uses intermissions, flashbacks and faces (with bare shoulders indicating the second layer of the moment), baring their raw feelings, in a considerate way and extent.

Some other review mentions "unlikeable characters" - well, yes. But that's what an intense movie sometimes is about: tearing the.viewer out of his comfort zone and confront him with hard truth and insight. The characters might be fictional, but for sure not without archetypes behind. And it is not their appearance, but their behaviour and mindset.

This story tears the mask off a certain social group and context, maybe like already "Blackeyes" did.

Married/Unmarried is a niche movie, not for entertainment, but for waking people up in a certain stage of life, and it does so by injecting the scenes using its clear pictures and faces, supporting dialogues and debates, anyone might already have lead in milder forms.

My 8/10 is not about liking/disliking or recommending this movie, but its inherent qualities.

If this movie is for you (=in your current stage of life or relationship), you will get caught by the first 5 minutes.

A simplistic melding of Ingmar Bergman, Eugene O'Neill, and Radley Metzger by a 16 year old devoted to Japanese animé would bring forth a better script than this pseudo artsy piece of junk.

A major problem with this film, which runs 86 minutes, is that it is 85 minutes too long. It is true that both Gina Bellman's and Kristen McMenamy's nipples are very pretty. But that they are not enough to sustain this poor man's Peter Greenway is readily apparent.

Derivative. Pedantic. Artless. What more can you say about such a dreary film. What it lacks in originality it makes up in...no, it doesn't make up in anything.

If you enjoy good cinema, you won't enjoy this.

This unsettling film has as its central theme that monogamy is somewhat cancerous, though not as cancerous as the deeply unpleasant characters who share this view. Set within color-coded interiors, very striking if a little garish, the film unfolds to reveal each character more deviant than the last and the whole married/unmarried combo-interaction between the four friends seems to fuse into one giant amoral heap that leaves the viewer numb and about as unromantic as one can feel! However, there is something extremely gripping about the whole experience, the brutality of the language, the bravery of the performance and possibly the sheer bravado of the director to make such a hateful film. A previous reviewer hailed the film misogynistic - which one character certainly is - but then proceeds not to comment on the actresses performances in the film but indeed praise their 'nipples' instead. And he calls the FILM misogynistic!!! Idiot! Not for everyone, clearly, but an unsettling alternative to the relationship drama.

What sort of person would.- a - make this type of movie? b - like this type of movie?

Pretentious, vile crap. Don't bother.

A quartet of self-absorbed yuppies, surrounded by impeccable decor but with their souls in a sewer, seem to have nothing better to do than to analyze themselves and each other into very negative states of destruction. Decadence and cynicism abound, and the viewer is gradually submerged into such bleak ugliness that it is almost stifling trying to find one positive note. The actors all play their parts very well, but do real people behave in this way? Ben Daniel's character is the most repugnant, perverted misogynistic sadist I've ever seen on film, definitely aberrant, abnormal. The women characters are pitiful, equally repulsive. Paolo Seganti's uncertain husband is the only one with any credibility...but he seems emotionally dead after his marriage is destroyed. Altogether, a distasteful enterprise.

A similar, but more effective study of amoral wealthy lifestyles, and ambivalent sexuality leading to tragedy is "Llanto de la Tortuga" which I much prefer over this one. It doesn't leave you with such a taste of bile in your mouth.