LAST NIGHT: haunting and understated

LAST NIGHT is a thoughtful, honest and painful exploration of trust and infidelity in marriage told through the experiences over one night of a young New York couple separated by the demands of his job.
Joanna (Keira Knightley) is a writer with one unsuccessful book under her belt and earning her living as a freelancer writing whatever a publisher will pay her for. Her husband Michael (Sam Worthington) is in commercial real estate, working on a project which requires an overnight trip to Philadelphia with his team to meet with a client.
Joanna's convinced there's something going on between Michael and his attractive colleague Laura (Eva Mendes) and challenges him with her suspicions as he's preparing to leave. He insists she's imagining things but the accusation plants a seed and as the business trip gets underway he finds himself looking at Laura in a new light. Meanwhile Joanna bumps into Alex (Guillaume Canet) an old flame, on the street and he invites her out for the night. He rapidly makes clear his continued feelings for her, reawkening in her emotions she'd kept repressed since marrying Michael.
LAST NIGHT reminded me of 'Closer' with one important difference. While all the characters in that 2004 drama were so unpleasant that they thoroughly deserved the misery they inflicted on one another, it's much less easy to apportion blame on Joanna and Michael. They're both decent, likable people who want their marriage to be a strong and enduring union but find themselves unable to resist temptations they know to be wrong and recognise will destroy what they've built together. In that very middle class way some will find excruciatingly annoying, both Joanna and Michael articulate their disapproval of what they're about to do and its consequences, with the people they're about to do it with, and those people agree with their assessment!
It's all very civilised and all the more tragic to watch two well matched individuals so knowingly orchestrating the destruction of their relationship for something both recognise is not worth the pain it will cause.
Director Massy Tadjedin wisely resists the temptation to have the film take sides, positioning the camera as a neutral observer, giving both Joanna and Michael equal screen time and treating Laura and Alex with sympathy also. Judgment is passed on everyone and no one leaving it to the viewer to decide who, if anyone, is most to blame for the events that unfold.

Worthington is not the most charismatic performer but he nevertheless holds his own against impressive but understated competition from Knightley, Mendes and an irresistibly charming Canet, and there's great support from Griffin Dunne as Alex's old friend who tries vainly to stop Joanna from doing what she appears helpless to stop herself doing.
Tadjedin's other master stroke is to know exactly when to bring down the curtain, It left me wanting much more but also appreciating that more would have spoiled everything that had gone before.