Dinner with Friends (2001)

(On Cable TV, September 2022) There isn’t a whole lot to Dinner with Friends and maybe that’s the point. Adapted from a theatrical play, it features four characters: two couples of friends working their way through the revelation of an affair involving one of them, and the subsequent fallout of the divorce. Our lead couple takes the news hard but in different ways, siding with one person, then not being so sure about it as further revelations emerge. Much of the film, true to its inspiration, takes the form of lengthy dialogue scenes, with a crucial time-skip in the middle. In the hands of versatile director Norman Jewison, it’s all very raw, (relatively) low-stakes and emotional: it’s the kind of film that actors love because it lets them demonstrate their dramatic chops, and indeed we have Dennis Quaid, Andie MacDowell, Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette as the lead quartet, and all four of them do decently well. While Dinner with Friends is not exactly a great film (it was made for HBO, and is largely forgotten today except for fans of the creative leads), it’s not unpleasant to watch despite the sometimes-difficult subject matter, and benefits a great deal from the acting talents of its leads.