Hus­band

Col­lec­tive­ly we’ve nev­er been more dis­il­lu­sioned with mar­riage: an aware­ness of the social contract’s gen­dered dis­tri­b­u­tion of labour, in tan­dem with women’s increas­ing can­did­ness regard­ing their emo­tion­al­ly, sex­u­al­ly, and polit­i­cal­ly dis­sat­is­fy­ing rela­tion­ships with men, has meant we’re per­haps more inclined to say, ​“it’s not for me” than gush over Pin­ter­est boards for wed­ding recep­tions. As Shon Faye recent­ly wrote, het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty is going through a PR cri­sis – with mar­riage per­haps at the forefront. 

Hus­band, a doc­u­men­tary direct­ed by social con­tract co-sig­na­to­ries/­mar­ried cou­ple Devo­rah Baum and Josh Appig­nane­si (and sequel to 2017’s The New Man), jos­tles into this burn­ing house with­out any desire to extin­guish the flames: it’s actu­al­ly quite at home there. Osten­si­bly fol­low­ing aca­d­e­m­ic Devorah’s New York book tour, the bla­tant­ly-titled ​‘Hus­band’ doc­u­ments how Josh man­ages to cen­tre the entire trip around him­self and the film he’s mak­ing – which is the film we’re watch­ing. As he talks a mile a minute, com­plain­ing about the film­mak­ing process, gab­bing about his inse­cu­ri­ties and hard­ly allow­ing a sec­ond of respite from his inces­sant com­men­tary, Josh drowns out Devorah’s anx­i­eties about her book tour with an impres­sive­ly ver­bose demon­stra­tion of psy­cho­log­i­cal manspread­ing. The irony that Devorah’s book, ​‘Feel­ing Jew­ish’, is about the impor­tance of hav­ing space to feel one’s emo­tions, is milked dry. 

When Josh demands that Devo­rah recre­ate a con­ver­sa­tion that hap­pened off-cam­era, her tired dis­com­fort with the film is pal­pa­ble – but then we remem­ber that she’s also its co-direc­tor, con­triv­ing a tru­ly odd premise. They’ve cho­sen to make a film that’s both stress­ful and incon­ve­nient for Devo­rah and ter­ri­bly unflat­ter­ing for Josh, even though its lack of con­cern with appear­ing at all nat­u­ral­is­tic reminds us that the nar­ra­tive is always under the couple’s control. 

The fourth wall burned down a while back (along with the untar­nished rep­u­ta­tion of mar­i­tal union), mak­ing Hus­band less ​“doc­u­men­tary” than auto-fic­tion ger­mi­nat­ing in non-fic­tion­al cir­cum­stances. It’s deter­mined to smack us upside the head with just how meta its meta-nar­ra­tive is – or less solip­sis­ti­cal­ly, how eager it is to con­firm that mar­riage is, in fact, per­for­mance art.

Talk­ing about being in New York, Josh says, ​“I can’t work out if I’m hat­ing every minute of this, or if I’m com­plete­ly elat­ed and delight­ed.” This rather sums up how it feels to watch Hus­band. The film’s blar­ing arti­fi­cial­i­ty is exhaust­ing, and it’s hard to imag­ine stom­ach­ing it for much longer than its 70-minute run­time. Like watch­ing the kind of play where they’ve clear­ly thought it’s very chic and intel­lec­tu­al to leave all the wiring exposed on stage, Hus­band makes you wish there was a tad more illu­sion draped onto its stark frame.

What tru­ly works the least in its favour is Devorah’s bril­liance – as we sit in on her book event chaired by Zadie Smith, the two authors’ con­ver­sa­tion is so fas­ci­nat­ing that it throws into relief just how lit­tle we’d rather be watch­ing the rest of it. Yes, that’s the point, meta-cin­e­ma, et cetera. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, ​“the point” of Hus­band is still less inter­est­ing than the Wife, and only seems to get in the way. 

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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