MARRIED LIFE

A Mexican woman tries to find meaning within her turbulent relationship.

The specter of patriarchy follows Jacqueline Cascorro like a shadow. She is by turns furious, devoted, sexually inspired, loyal, and murderous in regard to her husband, Nicolás Lobato. Jacqueline is driven mad with envy by his infidelities, dutifully reported to her by his employees and family members. She’s left to deal with the “inevitable” nature of his extramarital affairs. She copes with an improvisational spirit, turning to dalliances of her own and constantly cooking up murder plots with her lovers to remove this torturous stain from her life. And yet, she can’t escape Nicolás, even when he flees to Spain to distance himself from some bad business decisions. Upon his return to Mexico, Jacqueline is lured to him by some mix of magic and fate; her feelings shift from declaring that “her existence had been meaningless” without him to “she’d been the biggest fool in the world not to have had one or more lovers” while he was abroad. Pitol effortlessly captures the pain, ecstasy, and mundanity of marriage, the little moments that get amplified into life-altering landmarks, and the big choices forced into the deepest recesses of a person’s mind so that life can proceed unencumbered. Jacqueline tries to live independently of her husband’s rash, selfish choices, but time and again finds herself paralyzed by the prospect of a life without him. She just can’t quit Nicolás, for better and worse.

The idea of marriage is interrogated from a number of intoxicating angles in this entertaining tragicomedy.