Marie and Bruce 2004

The story opens with a typewriter gliding from a high-rise window, crashing onto the sidewalk, and being scooped up by a waiting garbage truck. Marie explains that this odd incident traces back to last night, when she lost her temper because of the relentless clatter of her writer husband Bruce’s machine.

Throughout the film, Marie regularly breaks the fourth wall, addressing the audience in sharp, venomous narration, while he responds with hollow terms of endearment, creating a tense, skewed rhythm between them. A flashback reveals that yesterday she had decided to leave him after he cried in her arms.

Bruce heads out for a lunch date with a male friend, and their banter drifts into strangely flirtatious territory, as if they are sharing profound insights about mundane topics, only to part with a stiff, uneasy goodbye.

Marie is drawn into the day by a Golden Retriever who seems to guide her through a door into a sunlit grassy field. She falls asleep, and the landscape morphs into waves of the ocean that slowly swallow the scene before the dog’s soothing lick wakes her, nudging her toward the party.

At the gathering, the host greets her but largely overlooks her presence. Bruce flits among the guests, keeping her at a distance and fueling her jealousy as he spends little time focusing on her. When she tries to rest, she drifts in and out of dreams that replay the same dull conversations in a loop.

In one dream, Bruce speaks of fantasizing about a young woman; rather than acting on the impulse, he rents a room and watches a woman across the way undress, an image that lingers with troubling ambivalence.

The dinner that caps the story unfolds in a restaurant where Marie finally voices her seething contempt for him, but the outburst seems to wash over him with limited effect. The couple talks about their future together, and Bruce surprises her by presenting a gift he bought for the house, a small gesture that shifts the dynamic and marks a turning point in their relationship.

Across scenes that tilt between surreal whimsy and sharp domestic critique, the film uses silence, confession, and mockery to map the fragility of love when performance begins to eclipse sincerity.