Debra Winger and Tracy Letts play a long-married, dispassionate couple who are both in the midst of serious affairs. But on the brink of calling it quits, a spark between them suddenly reignites, leading them into an impulsive romance.
Jacobs may be pessimistic about marriage á la mode, but he retains some qualified optimism for his characters, with a bruised tenderness for the story's central quartet, all flawed and flailing but trying, somehow, to move forward.
Jacobs has upended the classic rom-com template and delivered a film about the emotional distance between two people who still feel some fondness for one another in absentia.
"The Lovers" keeps folding, changing and evolving, but stays to its central theme, exploring two uncomfortably real characters who can't get out of the way of each other or themselves.
It's tempting to read this as a younger generation's condemnation of its parents' me-first indulgence, and an affirmation of familial unity by an unblinking, accusatory - but not histrionic - look at its opposite.
A random collection of observations about marriage, betrayal and whatever it is that allows couples to maintain a collegial interest in one another after everything else is gone.