Faces

FACES is right: this definitive John Cassavetes film consists almost exclusively of tight, uncomfortable close-ups. It takes place in the fourteenth year of the marriage of Richard (John Marley) and Maria (Lynn Carlin). Neither husband nor wife is content with the conditions that prevail; Maria joins her friends looking for romantic satisfaction elsewhere, while Richard secures the services of a prostitute (Gena Rowlands). Maria herself has a one-night stand with a hippie (Seymour Cassel), but this is no more satisfying than her dead-end marriage.