Take This Waltz Review

In recent years, Michelle Williams has become one of the most dependable actresses in Hollywood, turning in stellar performances in films as diverse as Brokeback Mountain, I'm Not There, Blue Valentine, and last year's My Week With Marilyn.  The actress's hot streak continues with writer-director Sarah Polley's beautifully observed marital drama, Take This Waltz, her first film since the double Oscar-nominated Away From Her.  The film toes the line of being too obvious, but thanks in large part to Williams, it successfully captures and explores the lure of infidelity.

Margot (Williams) meets the charming Daniel (Luke Kirby) while visiting a historical tourist trap for which she is to write new pamphlets.  Upon returning home, they discover that they're neighbors, and despite the subtle flirtation that colored their flight and cab ride, Margot reveals that she's married to aspiring chicken cookbook writer Lou (Seth Rogen).  Thus begins a love triangle that, refreshingly, doesn't revolve around sex, though it is colored by the expected thrill that something new brings.  Instead, Take This Waltz draws out the moment before the deed, the hesitation before breaking one heart to seize another, the breath-holding will-she-leave-him tension that is too much to bear.

And the film realizes that moment wonderfully.  Margot mistakes the actual physical touch for infidelity, so she allows herself to dally with Daniel so long as there's space between them.  He describes, in extreme detail, a sexual fantasy about Margot, speaking in the past tense, as though it's already done, a fact that cannot be changed or denied.  During a midnight swim together, the two squirm and writhe around each other, a sensual underwater ballet that is only ended when Daniel makes the grave mistake of grabbing Margot, shattering the reverie, causing her to run home.

Home, where she overcompensates for her emotional cheating by being annoyingly clingy, hanging off of Lou while he experiments in the kitchen, playing with his lips while he tries to talk on the phone.  It should be telling that the most intimate, sincerely romantic moment between Margot and Lou happens when they are looking at each other through a window, trying to find the same rhythm of a song only Margot can hear, touching and kissing the glass, the emotional charge so much more important than the physical contact.

The film's drama is epitomized in the Scrambler scene, during which Margot and Daniel take a ride on the spinning theme park attraction.  The ride is too dark and fast for anything to happen, according to Margot, but it becomes a sort of dream, a deep togetherness accompanied by the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" that shatters when the ride (and scene) abruptly end, and the lights come up.  Reality settles back in.  It echoes the strange return to the sunny day after seeing a matinee, waking up from a celluloid dream, and it marks the intrusion of reality into Margot and Daniel's flirtation, an intrusion that you can read in Kirby and Williams' expressions.

The whole triangle is brilliantly orchestrated, with Polley's action speaking volumes, even when her dialogue sometimes is too on-the-nose, more obvious in its thematic resonance than it needs to be.  When Margot speaks of her fear of connections in airports (because she hates being between two things), it's such a limp symbol for the two relationships she yearns for that any power it might wield is all but sapped, though some is returned with the theme is taken up again later in the film.  Similarly, the adage that "new things get old" is more effectively communicated through the juxtaposition of naked bodies in the locker room than the dialogue that accompanies it.

Still, these moments are few and far between, and on the whole, Polley's dialogue matches her action in its sharp observation.  The film is aptly titled, as each scene plays with the grace and appearance of effortlessness that you'd expect of an expert dancer.

Similarly impressive is the cast, led by the flawless Williams.  She makes Margot both frustrating and sympathetic, coloring her with confusion but also giving her a simmering audacity that plays like bitterness when she tries to control her foreplay with Lou.  Williams gives every emotion depth, and scenes like the ride on the Scrambler (my favorite scene in the film, and one of my favorites of the year) become layered, textured, and emotionally charged because of Williams' presence.  She has a rare gift, and it has rarely been in such fine form as it is here.

The supporting cast is great, too, with Kirby achieving heart-rending chemistry with Williams.  He impressively makes Daniel likable, which can sometimes be a problem for "the other man," though some of the credit certainly belongs to how the character is written.  Still, Kirby is a master of meaningful glances, and the film explores silence between its characters by allowing Margot and Daniel to enjoy the dreamy, gazing silence of each other's company while a similar lack of conversation drives Margot mad while out for an anniversary dinner with Lou.  These comparisons could feel textbook, easy, but the talent of these actors makes them work.  Rogen follows up his more dramatic turn in 50/50 with another example of his adaptability, and Sarah Silverman surprises in a weighty role as Lou's recovering alcoholic sister, who brings one of the film's most significant insights just before the credits roll.

Despite the many ways the film could not work (some of which almost cast shadows on what's actually there), Sarah Polley has masterfully created a drama that explores the idea of the honeymoon period, and in doing so, celebrates the comfortable, inevitable mundanity of relationships.  The film itself flirts with becoming mundane with its considerable runtime, but like many long-lasting relationships, the beauty of the whole is worth the roughness and disappointment that define each moment.