This is such an outstandingly intelligent movie, which takes us within the narcotic clouds of depression and self-control with which Carol has managed her life: hers is a prototypical version of Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique, announced a decade after this.
She listened for him coming down the hall before breakfast, running as fast as he could manage toward her kitchen, to see her, to press his soft cheek against hers and say her name.
As his consumption advanced, his letters grew briefer ("I had soup and eggs today; mutton I can't manage any more), hers more desperate ("I'm ashamed to call myself your wife").
By the end the actors, particularly Ms. Lee and Mr. Stoll (neither of whom can consistently manage an accent, hers Caribbean, his Brooklynese) seem to be walking through their parts with alarming indifference, motivated only to get to the curtain.
But he has managed to forget hers altogether, or pretended to, anyway.
They lived in what were essentially huts, though Eileen managed to make hers a home: "I put the bedroom furniture at one end and made a living area at the other.
Dr. Chang was so close to Mr. Manes that when she renovated her Queens mansion, she asked him to manage the project, according to a former university colleague of hers who was not willing to be named.
These hers-and-his interior monologues manage the tricky feat of being both minutely psychological and utterly comprehensible.
So, on the cover of hers, Cheryl manages to look virtuously princess-like but plainly wronged – while in naming his memoir after the US presidential retreat near Thurmont, Maryland, Walliams has managed two clever tricks: 1) Sending the origins of his title several thousand feet over at least some of his audience, but 2) making the most important point in a mere nine letters.
Joanna managed to get through hers, saying, "I knew you were my soulmate since the moment I saw you smile.
