Potential violence haunts every frame of the superb Killing Of Two Lovers
An initial, alarming threat winds up subsumed by the mundane sorrows and frustrations of a fractured family in Robert Machoian's film
Film Reviews Moafi
Note: The writer of this review watched The Killing Of Two Lovers on a digital screener from home. Before making the decision to see it—or any other film—in a movie theater, please consider the health risks involved. Here’s an interview on the matter with scientific experts.
Hitchcock’s famous example of suspense—a bomb planted beneath a table, its presence known to the viewer but not to the characters on screen—works equally well if the explosive device is a human being. In The Killing Of Two Lovers, it’s a middle-aged man named David (Clayne Crawford) who’s silently ticking; the film opens with him standing over the bed of a sleeping couple, pointing a pistol at each of them in turn, visibly anguished. Before he can summon the nerve or the will or the evil to fire, a toilet flushed elsewhere in the house scares him off, out the window and down the street, on foot, to what’s eventually revealed as his childhood home, where he’s temporarily moved back in with his widowed father (Bruce Graham). The woman David pondered murdering turns out to be his wife, Nikki (Sepideh Moafi), with whom he has a teenage daughter (Avery Pizzuto) and three younger sons (Arri, Ezra, and Jonah Graham). They’re recently separated, and both theoretically free to date others. David’s not handling it very well.
What makes The Killing Of Two Lovers more than just another tale of toxic testosterone is the extent to which this initial, alarming threat winds up subsumed by the mundane sorrows and frustrations of a fractured family. The specter of potential violence haunts everything that follows, with recurring reminders in the form of David’s actions—he stalks Derek (Chris Coy), the man Nikki has taken up with—and bursts of aggressively dissonant sound design that suggest a hair-trigger mental state. At the same time, though, David also just goes about the business of trying to get his life back in order. He dotes on their kids, walking the boys to school in the morning and struggling to explain the complexities of adult relationships to his wounded and angry daughter. Direct interactions with Nikki betray no hint of rancor; they go out on a scheduled date night, wind up parked not far from their house to make sure the kids are okay, and actually laugh together when Derek shows up at the door with a bouquet of flowers, which the boys promptly take outside and rip to shreds. (“Bury the evidence!”) Remove just a few admittedly crucial minutes from the film’s first hour and it would still be a superlative portrait of a painful split, evocatively shot in the squarish Academy ratio and rooted in achingly recognizable confusion and consternation.
Still, we’ve seen what’s churning in David’s head, and there’s the ominous title to consider. Working solo for the first time—he made three previous, little-seen features in collaboration with Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck—writer-director Robert Machoian takes pains to make his protagonist’s behavior comprehensible without excusing it, and to shift between moods without inducing tonal whiplash. Bold choices pay off, as when David, who once fronted a band, sings Nikki a new song he’s written, quite obviously about her (the lyrics recount what a fool he’s been), in quavering a cappella, and Machoian never once cuts away from David’s close-up profile to reveal how Nikki feels about this serenade. Rather than diminishing her, this choice feels oddly respectful of her autonomy, stripping the gesture of any emotional manipulation. Other stray moments, like the boys’ improbable love for Mitch Hedberg and David’s failed effort to win them over by learning some of his jokes, are so goofily specific that they feel as if they must have been imported from somebody’s actual life. Two Lovers also boasts a vivid sense of small-town familiarity (it was shot in Kanosh, Utah), with David constantly being greeted by name serving almost as a running gag.
Ultimately, a movie like this succeeds or fails largely on the strength of its lead actors, and Machoian cast his well. Best known for playing Mel Gibson’s character on the TV version of Lethal Weapon (and also to fans of prestige TV as Rectify’s Teddy Talbot), Crawford shrewdly avoids telegraphing David’s violent impulses at times when he’d be carefully suppressing them, which is virtually always; humanizing a potential murderer is tricky business, but his performance conveys credible love and heartbreak without ever seeking to justify the character’s possessiveness. Moafi (who played Loretta on The Deuce) has to subtly suggest a woman who proposed a trial separation mostly as a means of safely extracting herself from the marriage, but who also still genuinely cares for her husband; she nails this with comparatively minimal screen time. Coy, as the other man, gets only two scenes of any significance, but invests both of them with a palpable oiliness that’s just barely disguised as civility. The eventual, inevitable confrontation unfolds with such realistic ugliness that it’s difficult to watch (in a good way), and fulfills expectations while subverting them at the same time. This isn’t the best separation story in recent memory (and it certainly isn’t the worst), but it has more in common with Iranian humanism than its lurid title might intimate.
23 Comments
Sounds good. Also interesting that Clayne Crawford is the lead, as wasn’t he fired from the aforementioned Lethal Weapon TV show for violent outbursts and attacking his co-stars, or something similar?
I don’t know if he attacked anybody, but it seemed pretty clear he was just a dick to pretty much everyone on set.
his thin lips look sinister.
Eh. It was specifically that he and Damon Wayans hated each other, and Wayans was the bigger name.The anonymous crew leaks were pretty much split between “Yeah, Clayne’s intense and sometimes loses his temper, but at least he gives a shit” and “Yeah, Damon’s entitled and doesn’t give a shit, but at least he never yells.”The injury thing was Wayans’ getting hit during an effects malfunction during the episode Crawford directed.
“as wasn’t he fired from the aforementioned Lethal Weapon TV show for violent outbursts and attacking his co-stars, or something similar?”
No, but good on you for furthering ignorance.
The “physical assault” Wayans talked about was a scene where Crawford was supposed to toss a bottle to another actor, and the guy got hit in the face when he missed the catch, haha.Variety had a great breakdown:https://variety.com/video/exclusive-video-watch-the-on-set-drama-between-lethal-weapon-co-stars-clayne-crawford-and-damon-wayans/Pretty much “Famous boomer who made his name and money on In Living Color and My Wife and Kids has a very different work-style than a Gen-Xer coming out of a prestige drama.”They had to purge a big faction of the crew, who preferred “Occasionally blows up, but desperately wants to make something great” to “Charming and friendly, but lazy and constantly complaining.”I’m guessing this type of work environment is much more Crawford’s speed, haha.
I believe all his rectify cast came out of the woodwork to back his character…Who I felt terrible for was Sean William Scott coming in to fill in on a doa season
Assuming Crawford isn’t a garbage person, I’m really happy to hear he’s getting some more work now. His Teddy was the most surprisingly human part of ‘Rectify’. He’s a hell of an actor.
Yeah, the leaked audio of Crawford being “out of control” was from the tenth straight take that had been interrupted by ambient chatter, when he’d been told beforehand that the studio had rented the area.The initial story was “Screaming swears at 10 year olds.”The reality was “Screaming swears in frustration after 10 year olds shrieking in the background made him spend hours continuously reshooting the same scene, in an area they were supposed to have rented.”Like, the obvious preference is “Always engaged, wants to make something great, and never has profane meltdowns when great takes are ruined by outside circumstances,” but that’s hard to find.
I am looking forward to this. I have been a fan of Clayne Crawford since his two episode turn on junkfood-techno-caper Leverage as Elliot’s morally dubious counterpart. He also played in intensely goofy vampire on a Law and Order: Criminal Intent episode from season 9, the second Goldblum season.
There are vampires on L&O?
L&O shares the same universe as the X-files, so there’s all sorts of crazy shit going on just offscreen in an average episode of SVU
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1662148/
Omar Little, Gob Bluth, and The Muppets as well – apparently…
https://www.shortlist.com/news/what-do-the-x-files-arrested-development-law-order-the-wire-and-sesame-street-all-have-in-common
My dad and I started watching watching Lethal Weapon as a lark…and couldn’t stop, because of how damn captivating Crawford is.Thank God the S2 cliffhanger worked as a series finale
“the film opens with him standing over the bed of a sleeping couple, pointing a pistol at each of them in turn, visibly anguished. Before he can summon the nerve or the will or the evil to fire, a toilet flushed elsewhere in the house scares him off”So it’s Manhunter meets Married With Children? Sold!
This is my favourite joke to emerge from the comments section in quite some time. Well done indeed.
NO MA’AM.
Ba-WHOOOOSH
I’m so glad this is finally getting a release. It was my favorite film of Sundance 2020, a finely observed, real, and heartbreaking examination of family and community in small-town America much in the vein of Crawford’s previous, criminally overlooked series Rectify.
the REAL two lovers was directed by James Grey
Yeah, this movie rules. I was so psyched to see it get an Independent Spirit nomination for the John Cassavetes Award. That means this gem was made for less than $500,000! Go see it!!
This was an interesting film. Very low budget but still shot well (although it is weird to see a film not filling up the screen on my television) and the cinematography was excellent.Crawford has experience with this character, as David is basically a modified Teddy Talbot, but with kids. Virtually every scene other than the opener seemed to be something he had done previously on Rectify.Without spoilers, the scene with Derek at the end was a tad unrealistic in terms of the damage done and what appeared to be inflicted, but what do I know? Fortunately I haven’t been in that situation so I could be wrong.