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Jun 29, 2012 By Austin Trunick Issue #41 - Yeasayer

Take This Waltz is actress-turned-director Sarah Polley’s impressive and affecting third feature, an unsentimentally realistic and often funny look at long-term relationships. Margot (Michelle Williams) and Lou (Seth Rogen) are young and comfortably married, two writers whose everyday lives have lapsed into a complacent routine. This sufficient but unsatisfying existence starts to unspool when Margot realizes she’s falling for her suave, rickshaw-driving neighbor, Daniel (Luke Kirby). Over the course of the film, she struggles to come to terms with the conflicting feelings of being in love with both men, each of whom offers her something different that may or may not bring happiness with it.

Infidelity is hardly a new subject in independent film, but the small corps of actors imbue it with a sense of honesty through their mature, believable performances. Director Polley stylishly surrounds them with a vibrantly hot color palette and a superb soundtrack that informs and furthers each scene, including an ingenious use of the deceptively sad “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Sexually charged, frank, and relatable, Take This Waltz is a bittersweet observation of adult romance. Not always pretty but often very funny, it’s a story that most importantly rings true.

(www.magpictures.com/takethiswaltz)

Author rating: 8/10