Two seemingly separate stories intertwine together in the saga of brother and sister who are living on the last strands of reality. Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes, a real life married couple, are parts of their own states of confusion, pretending to be things that they are not. Rowlands, in the process of a miserable separation from a miserable marriage, ends up at the home of her writer brother (Cassavettes), turning his life further upside down while continuing to head on her own downswing. He's a miserably unhappy Playboy and she's so determined to be happy that everyone around her ends up miserable as a result. In short, their lives, separated by different problems, shouldn't align at this point in their lives.
Such amazing performances are given in a film that is at alternate points deeply depressing, often confusing, infrequently funny and often maddening. Rowlands briefly gets to meet Cassavette's son from a brief marriage and doesn't even use the phrase "aunt". In Cassavettes films, it is often impossible to tell what is reality and what is in the character's kinds. These are two extremely damaged people who are often living life in a world turned upside down, and their realities are not of any sensible existence.
Some of the oddities here include Cassavettes' involvement with scores of obvious call girls and presence at a party where he encounters several female impersonators who question his sexuality, Rowland's bowling trip and purchase of some exotic pets, and most bizarrely, her dream of her ex-husband and daughter in a ballet setting. In spite of this parallel universe where their minds reside, I found that I could not take my eyes of it although I did find that I needed a break from it 3/4 through to regain my own sense of reality.
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