That's the setup, and while Bell's screenplay doesn't exactly dig into anything unique or
revelatory about crumbling relationships, there is at least a bit
of honesty to these
characters, despite how broadly drawn they are.
From his second feature, 2008's Tony Manero,
about a Saturday Night Fever - obsessed killer in»70s Chile, up to his forthcoming film, the poetic Neruda (out in the UK in April), Larraín has made
character studies that trust audiences to search the sweep
of a film for meaning, using the formal potential
of cinema to explore what people are like, rather than saddling an actor with
revelatory baggage.