Declining fertility rates, cultural shifts away from family life, and films that mock marriage are increasingly viewed as symptoms of broader civilizational strain.
A new comedy-drama opens with an Oscar Wilde quotation: “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.” The film uses the line to frame its central critique of matrimony.
Unhappy marriages have long appeared in art, but earlier works emerged from societies that treated stable unions as the default. In a 1962 play and its 1966 film adaptation, a hostile academic couple shocked audiences precisely because their dysfunction was abnormal.
Modern films increasingly present marital collapse as ordinary. Rather than provoking discomfort, such portrayals assume viewers will recognize their own experiences in the breakdown.
The new film remakes a foreign-language production and follows a couple whose indifference and hostility are treated as unremarkable. The story also normalizes casual drug use, open marriages, and group sexual encounters as routine plot elements.
Unlike earlier depictions of miserable spouses who remain plausibly human, the central pair are written as so detached that they consider abandoning their vows without cause. A late reconciliation feels imposed rather than earned.
The husband teaches at a music conservatory and abandons a class rehearsal without interest. The wife greets him with open contempt. Both occupy luxury housing yet use it chiefly as a stage for conflict.
Their grievances are thin: he mourns a disbanded early-2000s music group, while she resents domestic life despite apparent financial freedom. Shared parenthood does nothing to soften their mutual ridicule.
Their behavior is driven by an upcoming gathering with upstairs neighbors, a retired firefighter and a sex therapist. The wife obsessively buys new furnishings to impress them, a rare moment the film grounds in reality.
The neighbors reveal they host orgies and invite the couple to join. The protagonists accept, presenting the arrangement as a logical extension of social openness rather than a boundary violation.
The film then shifts into extended monologues explaining the neighbors’ lifestyle and offering impromptu therapy. A semi-serious finale shows the couple briefly separating before an uncertain reunion.
The narrative implies marriage is so degraded that only exposure to amorality can revive it. Aside from the husband’s intermittent scorn for his neighbors, the story fails to engage.
Compared with classic films that depicted marriage with nuance or redemption, the current work reflects a sharp decline in how the institution is imagined on screen.
