Age: Adult
Violence: Almost none (a fist fight near the end)
Sex: Lots is implied, but not too graphic.

If you are looking for blood and guts or wild car chases, this is not the film for you, though there is a bit of fast driving in one scene. Neither is this an esoteric, heavy psychological film that you go to once a year to keep your more cerebral partner happy.

Afterglow is spellbinding.

Two couples, each caught in their own marital trap, seek deliverance from their personal demons.

A young wife, Marianne (Lara Flynn Boyle), desperately wants love (and a baby) from her egotistical, self-centered, insensitive, yuppie, businessman husband, Jeffrey (Jonny Lee Miller), who appears to have the emotional I.Q. of a frog. He is perhaps the most shallow (and least likable) character in the film. He's not too sure what he wants but the safe strings-free attention of women his mother's age, with soft and gently wrinkled skin, attracts him and he appears to flirt with the idea of joining the ranks of his gay business associate's friends. Jeffrey gives Marianne neither the love nor the sex that she wants and his rejection is made sharper by his cruel words.

And then there are Phyllis and Lucky. Phyllis is British, an aging former actress, and Lucky, her fix-it-man husband, is American and a former sailor. Phyllis painfully seeks romantic love in the memories of movies she made long ago with a leading man who died the day our film opens. Lucky looks for physical love with any woman whose pipes or door locks need fixing, yet there is the touch of an old-fashioned moralizer about him. Julie Christie deserves an Academy Award for her role as Phyllis. Nick Nolte is brilliant as Lucky.

In the case of Phyllis and Lucky, it is clear that there is more to their difficulty in connecting than meets the eye and, indeed, their dark secret is revealed about halfway through the film. With Marianne and Jeffrey, however, one is never sure how much is there.

As opposed to the older couple, we are given none of their history, emotional or otherwise. We wonder why we are told so little about this young couple. Is it because they really lead a shallow existence, or could the message here be that as the story unfolds, they are building their history and perhaps, one day, in a period of marital crisis, this current crisis will be what they look back on and remember as the event that made them what they are? This explanation creates a kind of time warp for the viewer; in order to fully probe the significance of the relationships of the two couples, one has to peer either into the past or into the future.

There are moments when we feel like shaking the young Jeffrey and shouting at him, "Wake up and listen to your wife! Communicate! Give her what she wants! Try sharing yourself!" But Jeffrey indicates that all Marianne cares about is her inner world and her need for love, sex and a baby and that she doesn't ask him about his world.

Symbolically, they like different music (…different art, different priorities in house repairs…) and each one is always switching channels on the other, leading to a very funny scene near the end when they roll back and forth over the remote control, symbolizing an instability in their lives similar to the frenetic music that issues forth.

Phyllis and Lucky also get caught up in what appears to be broken record arguments, but it is clear that they cannot get beyond them not because of childish, immature attitudes, but because of deep wounds that will not heal.

As each character, for his or her reasons, reaches out to another, sometimes painfully, sometimes manipulatively, sometimes kindly, we see that it is solving nothing. Each spouse will ultimately have to confront his/her other half and, in the process, himself.

Unlike movies of the genre like Bridges of Madison County, that are beautifully filmed, with wonderful music, and ultimately glorify infidelity, supposedly for a higher purpose, Afterglow makes no such claims. One wonders about the meaning of the name, alluded to early in the film by Phyllis. Is afterglow, in the wake of the discovery of love, a soft and gentle light that lingers thoughtfully or is it a dim light that slowly fades and hints of the end?

The ultimate confrontation takes place between Lucky and Phyllis, and between Lucky and another person who shares their secret. Their confrontations are real and full of pain and passion. Out of the primal screams, hope for their marriage is reborn. We are not so reassured about Jeffrey and Marianne, but a part of us wants to believe that they, like the older couple, will learn something from their mistakes. However, a marital therapist would probably not lay odds on this couple making it.

Afterglow is about deep longing, caring, communication, rejection, jealousy, regret and the desire to share. It probably leads a lot of married couples to leave the theater pondering the definition of love.