Be Mine

45 YEARS (A-minus) - This quietly devastating drama about a couple about to celebrate their 45th anniversary boasts one of the most powerful endings you'll ever see. But its creaky, deliberate first act threatens to derail the production and drive away impatient viewers.

It's refreshing to see a quiet drawing-room drama presented so confidently. Kate Mercer (the eternal Charlotte Rampling) is a spry, loving wife bounding around her country home in Norfolk, England, sporting jeggings and that weighted smile. Husband Geoff (Tom Courtenay, "Billy Liar, "Dr. Zhivago") bumbles about in a bit of a fog, peering out cluelessly from behind old-man spectacles.

A ghost hovers over their marriage. In the week before their big anniversary bash, Geoff receives a letter informing him that the body of his former girlfriend, Katya, has been discovered on a glacier in the Swiss Alps, where she had plummeted to her death while traveling in Europe with Geoff. What was ancient history, a tamped-down issue, is suddenly thrust front and center in Kate and Geoff's marriage. She wonders: Has he ever gotten over his old flame, a young love, who perished so tragically?

Working from a short story by David Constantine (who certainly owes a sizable debt to James Joyce's "The Dead"), Andrew Haigh adapts and directs his second major feature. His previous outing, "Weekend," followed a finely observed couple of days at the beginning of a relationship. Here, Haigh methodically shaves off layers from a calloused, childless marriage until he hits a nerve.

But the story meanders at times, suggesting a bit of padding of the short story into a 95-minute feature. Much of the "action" takes place in the couple's home, with claustrophobic scenes in the bedroom and the attic. Courtenay is essentially somnambulant, struggling to grasp the line between nostalgic and dotty. Rampling's Kate does her share of moping throughout the first half, as well. By all accounts, they get along fine.

It's difficult to discuss the second half of the movie without giving too much away. As the week passes and the big day approaches, it becomes clear that Geoff never quite got over Katya and that Kate has been blind to the possibility that she may not have been the sole focus of Geoff's affections and intentions. A devastating scene of Kate rooting around the archives in the attic tears the narrative open. And the final pas de deux between Geoff and Kate at their party at last lays everything bare, albeit subtly.

Haigh knows that he has an ending for the ages in his back pocket the whole time. (It compares with the climax of "Phoenix" for the best of 2015.) He has the patience and skill to craft a simmering portrait of a sclerotic marriage. After it finds a rhythm, "45 Years" serves up minor-key intrigue. Can Geoff prove that he has devoted this nearly half a century to his beloved Kate? Can Kate come to terms with the fact that she might not be his one true love? Is living a lifetime at another's side any better or worse than living only in another's heart?

Kate's friend Lena warns her to expect Geoff to break down in tears during his speech at the anniversary party, because men always are caught off-guard in the moment by truths and realities that women have known all along. As if on cue, that climactic scene does evoke some tears. It did in me, as the image of a particular lost love flashed in my mind. Weak as a clueless cad.

BONUS TRACKS
Presented without comment, from the retro soundtrack, two well-placed songs that end up telling the whole story: