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But what happens when the emotional terrain of the film becomes their primary domain?
Were introduced to Jean, her sullen mien, and the lacquered image she fashions over it.
Her blonde hair cascades in waves.
She languidly smokes a cigarette.
Its something the film deliciously takes advantage of thanks to the precise costume design by Natalie OBrien.
Hes missing from her life, and from the picture, thereafter.
Jean fills the hole left by his absence with endless questions that rarely get answered.
I wont lie, I think cinema is a medium for beauty.
The camera glides over wood-paneled walls and gold-flecked wallpaper.
(The twinkling piano score and Aretha Franklin soundtrack accentuate the films moodiness.)
Blessedly, it does.
She cant do it herself.
Jean is forced to grow up.
She juggles being a new mother to Harry with the anxious pressures of her predicament.
Shes occasionally a touch paranoid, looking for her fate to turn in every shadow and along every corner.
We learn about her miscarriages, which add a different contour to her loneliness.
But Hart demonstrates an awareness of Jeans privilege and its material effects.
Jean successfully spins a lie.
Its her white femininity and all the trappings it represents that saves them.
As the film continues, Teri becomes more and more intriguing.
Teri: Nothings worse for you.
Jean: You dont know that.
Teri: Yeah, I do.
In this moment, the lines of race and gender are made clear.
Blake plays her with sagacious splendor.
Seriously, cast her in more projects, Hollywood.
Teri is smart, in control, steady, and deeply in love with her family.
This isnt to say that Brosnahan doesnt transfix.
Eddie, pointedly, had never let her drive.
On Brosnahans face, we can see the boundless determination and possibility that now exists within her character.
The reality for women in the 1970s was both bleak and full of fiery feminist invention.
It wasnt until that decade that women were allowed to get credit cards and bank accounts on their own.
It wasnt until 1978 that laws began to be adjusted to more accurately reflect the truth of marital rape.
This was a decade of monumental upheaval for women, for Black folks, for this country.
One cant help but bring this knowledge to the film.
The story could have ignored the racial politics of its narrative.
It could have easily been a vacuous parade of period grit glossed up for our age.
