AIFF 2012: Truth Dripped off the Screen from the Film Between Us

Between Us had a good audience in the tiny theater downtown.  I wasn't looking forward to watching two couples duking it out, but I quickly got pulled in.    Truth dripped off the screen as the four people  revealed secrets about themselves and about each other.  Sometimes they worked as couples, sometimes as individuals, sometimes the women teamed up, sometimes the men, as alliances shifted constantly.  It wasn't easy to watch, but these secrets weren't simply these four people's secrets, they were the secrets of all of us.  Powerful.  'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' came to mind and I even stopped at Blockbusters to see if they had a copy so I could compare them.  (They didn't.) 

OK, that's my first impression.  Let's let it settle and see how I feel later.


It plays again Friday at 8pm at the Bear Tooth.   


Here's an answer from an interview of director Dan Mirvish by Kerry at the Napa Valley Film Festival last month.

4) As both the film’s Director and Writer, how did you come up with the idea to write the script for “Between Us?”
There was talk on Broadway of turning my last film, “Open House,” into a play, but during all my meetings, I asked if anyone had any good plays that would make good film adaptations. I read stacks of them, turned down the one that became “Ides of March” and chose “Between Us.”  It seemed to fit where I was in life: married, with young children, and struggling for some sort of artistic integrity. I got together with Joe Hortua, the playwright, and he liked my ideas for a filmed adaptation. So we collaborated on the screenplay that kept most of the dialogue that made the play so successful but added elements and restructured it in a way that I think make it work cinematographically.