First published on American Madness on 23 January 2009.
Republished here with a typo correction.
Emotional abuse and marital discord have not been this explicitly depicted on screen since Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton devastated each other and another young couple in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The barbs slung in that older film were exchanged between a husband and wife, long-married and bitter. Edward Albee’s play on which it is based poked holes in the mythology of the American dream, part of which necessitates being a happily married couple.
