The Killing of Two Lovers (2021)

User Review

• 

  d_riptide

  8 / 10

  Honesty and trust should be a fundamental piece of how every relationship, romantic or otherwise, is shaped down the road; the fact we humans are so stubborn, so headstrong, so blind to our pain and suffering that we take for granted exactly the kind of toll it takes on everyone around us is a stark reminder how self-destructive life can be to push people to their emotional and physical limits. It’s that dreadful foreboding that leaves The Killing Of Two Lovers cloaked and masquerading as a depressing tale on heartbreak and denial both on the surface and underneath its layers.
  
  
  Perhaps the best way to describe this movie is....hauntingly harrowing.
  
  
  The performances are some of the most genuine I’ve seen all year, reflecting the reality of fractured families as well as the lack of emotional maturity one suffers through being on the receiving end of situations far beyond your control.
  
  Cramped production design does wonders for the spaced-in setting with very little breathing room. For once, the inconsistency in the lighting and the positioning of the camera actually add to the film’s deconstruction of the story as opposed to taking away that longevity, mostly due to how the tonal consistency doesn’t take much away from the immersion it sets up from the very beginning. The colorless cinematography feels about as natural as the very slow and immaculate pacing, something the ominous, low-booming sound design helped hammer home excessively. Sure, it is occasionally jarring and overwrought but in movies like this where you inevitably have to walk a fine line between being hopeful and hopeless in a situation where there doesn’t appear to be any silver lining.....you gotta make due with what you got.
  
  
  No real issues stemmed from the plot at hand; there is a fine line between a cold, ruthless drama and heartbreaking tragedy and director Robert Machoian teeters just enough on the edge of both to squeeze out a very brutally honest story carried by brutally honest performances surrounded by a messy subject no one really likes to dig into.
  
  
  It means well but if I hadn’t seen The Lighthouse, something tells me this film would’ve hit me a lot deeper than it did.
  
  Similar to The Lighthouse, it has a brilliant manner with toying with your emotions but unlike that film, this one is nowhere near as sinister in deconstructing the polarity in its own narrow and oppressive subject matter. It doesn’t have that kind of striking symmetry in its cinematography nor the synergy in its other respective aspects, right down to the bloody 4:3 aspect ratio trying and falling short on adding a heightened quality to the material.
  
  
  Can’t honestly say much else about this. It’s a harrowing story of dwindling love and anybody whose lived through a similar situation or otherwise can understand wholeheartedly.

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