The country of marriage

the long version

The Country of Marriage shows, with frightening clarity, that the most ordinary lives are fraught with secret dreams and frustrations that can both support and sabotage everyday love. Giardina looks at our relationships - with an eye capable of clinical precision but never devoid of compassion - and gives voice to the emotions that lie unexplored and unexpressed beneath their seemingly placid surface. In "Days with Cecilia," a highly articulate shop teacher reveals by attrition the sexual secret of his marriage. In "The Lake," a young fireman confronts his complicity in the murder of his best friend's wife. And in "The Films of Richard Egan," the aborted career of an almost-was film star finds its echo in a suburban boy's life.