One of Cassavetes' several masterpieces, this portrait of a marriage in crisis ping-pongs between a successful businessman (Marley) and his tartly neurotic wife (Carlin) as they try to "swing" with a brittle but sharp hooker (Rowlands) and a callow, talkative hippy stud (Cassel).
The scenes in Rowlands' pad, as Marley spars verbally with the girl and her other chattily sad clients, are among the best things the director ever did, and the slide from jokiness to bitterness in the marital conversations is truly alarming. The kinetic, blurry black-and-white style superbly captures the gaudy clubs and emptily luxurious interiors through which the emotionally wounded characters crawl, allowing a perfect cast room to free-associate to devastating effect.