A little gothic in a fraught small-town romance.
The Killing of Two Lovers
Now and then a small film deals successfully with the small things that live within the larger life, in this case David (Clayne Crawford), a husband separated from his wife, Nikki (Sepideh Moafi), and trying desperately to save the marriage. As writer/director Robert Machoian portrays them, they are a not-extraordinary couple, he a former singer with a band and she a former lawyer in Kenosh, Utah, with immovable mountains the ever-present background.
Although they have agreed to date others, he is not happy she is seeing Derek (Chris Coy), a clean-cut colleague of hers seemingly nice but a serious rival. Underneath David’s tortured longing, with a scruffy beard and Casey Affleck demeanor, is a seething urge to end the pain by shooting her, and when that fails, maybe Derek.
And so, the little story begins to look like American gothic or kitchen-sink realism or neo-noir, and indeed it has the potential to be all. Yet it is more because Machoian shapes his simple story into an allegory about the need of even dysfunctional families to stay together despite the odds of being whole in today’s world.
The spare story with Greek-tragic potential is treated with respect and a lingering dignity for this couple desperate to keep things together, best exemplified by teen Jess (Avery Pizzuto) and her wailing about the family staying together. Her teenage taciturn angst helps accentuate the gravity of the separation in need of mending.
The story’s end brings the violence promised by the opening with an inevitability for which audiences can only shake their heads in confirmation. In other words, while nothing much happens, everything happens, each set piece measured to illuminate the struggle men and women have endured forever to try to make things right.
Only the mountains evade the effects of fate and human folly while David and Nikki have potential by virtue of their passion to overcome the losses felt deeply out where the mountains rule and man is mostly a bystander.
The Killing of Two Lovers
Director: Robert Machoian (When She Runs)
Screenplay: Machoian
Cast: Chris Coy (The Front Runner), Clayne Crawford (The Perfect Host)
Run Time:1h 25m
Rating: R
PRIME
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
