On Joan Micklin Silver's A Fish in the Bathtub and Jerry Stiller's Abiding Love

One dark and stormy night, constitutional grump Sam comes home to his long-suffering but equally constitutionally sweet wife, Molly , two fresh bakery buns in one hand and a live fish in the other.

Married for 61 years until her death in 2015, rest her spirit, Stiller & Meara get a chance to perform marriage in, which means they get to litigate matrimonial vicissitudes throughout. Silver’s film allows them to put their own marriage through stress tests. What do they gain, and what does the audience gain, from watching them bicker, argue, and then suffer an explosive disagreement in front of their friends?compliments the designs of the screenplay .

Sam and Molly aren’t the only married couple under stress. Their conflict bleeds into the life of their son, Joel and his wife, Sharon , who play hoteliers to Molly when she moves in with them and starts dating. Sharon tries to keep her patience while Molly rearranges her kitchen and passive aggressively offers to stay elsewhere. Real estate agent Joel, meanwhile, tries to keep his cool with a flirty client, Tracy .

The massive carp wading around Sam’s tub doesn’t have any answers, but when the film ends and Sam finally reconciles with Molly, we get one. It’s packaged in the love Stiller and Meara have for one another, delivered through a heartfelt final exchange that reads less as dialogue and more as conversation between spouses. It’s possible that no one in the history of big screen couples loved each other more than they did.

Boston-based culture writer Andy Crump has been writing about film and television online since 2009 . You can follow him on

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