Amoeba Music

The trailblazing Joan Micklin Silver—one of only five women to direct a film for a Hollywood studio in the 1970s—digs fearlessly into the psychology of a thorny relationship in this anti–romantic comedy, based on Ann Beattie's best-selling novel, about lovelorn civil servant Charles (John Heard) and his married-but-separated coworker Laura (Mary Beth Hurt). Months after their affair has ended, Charles is haunted by memories as he desperately attempts to rekindle a love that perhaps never was. Switching deftly between past and present, Micklin Silver guides this piercing deconstruction of male wish-fulfillment fantasy beyond standard movie-romance tropes into something more complicated and cuttingly truthful.

Special Features:

• New 4k restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• New program featuring producers Griffin Dunne, Mark Metcalf, and Amy Robinson
• Documentary from 1983 by Katja Raganelli about director Joan Micklin Silver
• Excerpts of a 2005 interview with Micklin Silver
• Original ending of the film, cut by Micklin Silver for its rerelease in 1982
• Trailer
• An essay by scholar Shonni Enelow