Openly gay director Ira Sachs talks about his experience directing a movie about heterosexual Married Life.

by Ken Knox

“I’ve always been compelled by what goes on between two people in bed,” proclaims director Ira Sachs. “That doesn’t necessarily mean sexually. It also means in terms of the nature of intimacy.”

Sachs is talking about the motivation for his new movie, Married Life, a whimsical “period piece” about the secret affairs that go on between four people in the late 1940s. Based on John Bingham’s 1953 novel, Five Roundabouts to Heaven, the movie tells the bewitching story of a married man (Chris Cooper) involved in an affair with a younger woman (Rachel McAdams) who decides to murder his wife (Patricia Clarkson) to save her the embarrassment of a divorce. Toss Pierce Brosnan in as his best friend—a playboy who takes a liking of his own to McAdams’ Kay—and you’ve got the makings of a noir-ish black comedy about what goes on in the minds of married people.

“I’m interested in character dramas and domestic stories about how people love and lose,” says Sachs, who is perhaps best known to gay audiences for directing the moody 1996 gay-themed feature The Delta. “But I wanted to talk about those things in a forum that was kind of inspired by a lot of those old Joan Crawford and Bette Davis movies. These were movies made to entertain—they had a mandate, which was to make some money—but now, with the distance that we have, they also fulfill other quotients. They’re about things. They’re about people’s lives.”

Sachs worked with his good friend, screenwriter-editor-director Oren Moverman (who most recently edited Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There), on the adaptation, transporting the action in the book from the 1930s of London to the 1940s of New York, changing the characters’ names, creating a few new characters to flesh out subplots, and coming up with a design concept that made the film look like both a period piece and a contemporary drama about today’s issues. “We just made it our own,” Sachs says of the adaptation. “We tried to approach the characters, the clothes, the texture of the acting as if we were making a film today about today. These characters aren’t that different from our parents or grandparents when it comes down to what it’s like to try and make a relationship work. So, we tried to forget that we were making a film of the past and still be honest to the details of the time.

“We tried to hone in on this particular idea, which is, ‘What do you know about the people you sleep with and what don’t you know?’” he adds. “We wanted to approach that question sympathetically, not negatively, in terms of there always being gray areas in intimacy, and in a way that gives people a certain ability to love each other better at the end of the day.”

Sachs then assembled an A-list cast of some of today’s most respected and versatile actors to bring the story to life. “We had a great opportunity with this movie, and I think all the actors recognized that we had the chance to make a film that meant something to each of us in a way that was really fun and engaging. In a way, it’s an over-the-top movie, but as actors, they almost approached it like it was [an Ingmar] Bergman [film]. They took the texture of acting seriously. There’s something very honest about the emotions—even if there is something exaggerated about the storytelling. And I think it’s because these actors took risks and gave parts of themselves in their performances that we were able to pull off that balance.”

Though the film focuses on four heterosexual characters, the openly gay Sachs says that the film’s roots in melodrama make it suitable to gay audiences. “We wanted people to know from the very beginning that they had the right to take what was going on very seriously, but that they also had the right to laugh at the circumstances—in the same way that we as a gay audience go and watch something like Harriet Craig or Now Voyager. We’re laughing because it’s so over-the-top; on the other hand, something is touching us.”

Being a gay man, Sachs adds, gave him a certain unique insight into his characters’ lives. “I think that I tend not to judge my characters very much—and I think that’s something I take from the fact that I’ve been an outsider in various ways, and I identify with a lot of people and their struggles and how they’re trying to make choices on a daily level that are honest to themselves.”