Mr. & Mrs. Bridge

A family film set in Kansas City. Walter is a lawyer. Hard-working, orderly, showing no feeling and discussing nothing. India is his wife. She runs the house, enrols in a painting class, tries to learn Spanish, and leaves all of it unfinished. They have three children. Ruth goes to New York, Carolyn marries early, Douglas grows up. From there the film moves by laying short scenes end to end. A meal, a dancing class, a letter, a friend, a holiday. Years pass. The narrative comes from the 1930s to the end of the war and no large event happens in any part of it. India wants to talk. She asks her husband questions and every time he closes the subject. There is a scene with a tornado. Everyone goes down to the restaurant's cellar and Walter goes on sitting at his table. What the narrative is interested in is not incident but a life missed: the film tells what a woman never got to live through the fact that she was never asked. Walter is not drawn as bad. He loves his wife, protects his family, and simply cannot describe a feeling; the film shows him as a period rather than a tyrant. The source is two separate novels by Evan S. Connell; one book is about the woman and the other about the man, and the film joins them. The two leads were married in real life and play husband and wife here as well. Joanne Woodward was nominated for an Academy Award for the part. Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Blythe Danner and Kyra Sedgwick are in the cast. James Ivory directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet period drama built on observation. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a story; the film is deliberately without incident and nothing knots in two hours.