Ex-Hus­bands – first-look review

After Hours reunion!! It’s been near­ly 40 years since Grif­fin Dunne was seen puz­zling over the plas­ter-of-Paris bagel-shaped paper­weights man­u­fac­tured by Rosan­na Arquette’s room­mate in Mar­tin Scorsese’s riotous 1985 all-nighter. 

They book a return meet­ing in Noah Pritzker’s alto­geth­er more gen­tle and mature­ly reflec­tive Ex-Hus­bands, essay­ing a recent­ly-divorced cou­ple who are tee­ter­ing on retire­ment age and grap­pling with the pre­cip­i­tous home-straight of life on Earth. Not that we see much of Arquette, as she slinks into the back­drop of a film (clue’s in the title) that focus­es almost exclu­sive­ly on male anx­i­ety and the wist­ful, self-anni­hi­lat­ing desires of XY chro­mo­some types. 

It’s worth say­ing from the off that, cast­ing choic­es aside, that’s the only thing that Mr Plitzk­er has pur­loined from Mr Scors­ese, as this is a film that takes things very slow and steady, with a sound­track of AM radio toe tap­pers and a script that trades heat­ed con­flict for goofi­ly-rea­soned dis­course and home­spun domes­tic philso­phies. The best way to describe it is that it resem­bles a Noah Baum­bach film, had Baum­bach been writ­ing while dosed on heavy seda­tives which served to negate his black­ly-cyn­i­cal worldview.

Dunne plays Peter, a dod­dery New York den­tist with a still-gor­geous head of hair who is shocked by the fact that his elder­ly father has decid­ed to divorce with a crazed view to tak­ing one last shot of find­ing true love. Six years lat­er, he too is dec­o­rat­ing his own bach­e­lor pad, find­ing him­self out on his ear at the behest of his wife (Arquette). His eldest, Nick (James Nor­ton) is a depres­sive wastrel who’s in the process of tor­pe­do­ing his own engage­ment to betrothed, Thea. While younger, recent­ly-out­ed Mick­ey (Miles Heiz­er) tries to stay sane as his fam­i­ly mem­bers all melt down around him and he’s hav­ing trou­ble hook­ing up in a mean­ing­ful way.

Ex-Hus­bands is a risk-averse com­e­dy of gen­er­a­tional malaise that still man­ages to charm via its easy inter­ac­tions and dole­ful per­for­mances. Peter gifts his father a framed poster of Ernst Lubitsch’s über-farce, To Be or Not to Be, and there are hints of that film ear­ly on when it turns out that Peter acci­den­tal­ly booked the same resort in Tulum that Nick and his squad were head­ed to for a bach­e­lor par­ty, that things are head­ed in a sim­i­lar­ly screw­ball direc­tion. Con­trived set-up aside, there are no more curi­ous coin­ci­dences or wild plot machi­na­tions, as Peter and the boys have a pleas­ant, unevent­ful time togeth­er, reflect­ing on their fail­ures and attempt­ing, often unsuc­cess­ful­ly, to boost col­lec­tive morale.

Dunne in par­tic­u­lar makes for a com­pelling lead, his char­ac­ter nev­er real­ly pre­sent­ing as the annoy­ing, self-involved derp that his fam­i­ly claim he is. And the film is all the bet­ter for its mea­sured approach to char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion rather than dump­ing lots of com­ic chal­lenges on the play­ers’ laps. Peter’s obses­sive dark side only emerges right at the end, when his ded­i­ca­tion to the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage – even for divorcees – is pre­sent­ed in a chill­ing­ly eccen­tric coda.