'Desperate Characters' (1970) Frank D. Gilroy.

Supremely gifted actors Shirley MacLaine and Kenneth Mars do excellent work in masterful director Frank D. Gilroy's black-hued, acerbic drama about a moribund middle-class couple Sophie (Shirley MacLaine) and her cynical husband Otto (Kenneth Mars) whose increasingly glacial relationship has eased uncomfortably into mutual diffidence, vividly leavened with blithe bouts of deliciously acid sniping! There is a stark, bitter quality to the text, and the mostly middle-aged characters seem terminally dispossessed, angry, frequently addressing one another tersely in a cold, epigrammatic manner, the unvarnished, downbeat dialogue, while sublimely eloquent, has an obsidian dark, pessimistically Pinter-esque quality, and Sophie's existential despair becomes quite acute by the time the beleaguered couple take their ill-fated trip to their rather ostentatious-looking country house. Immaculate performances, and an unsually rich text make 'Desperate Characters' a mesmerically morbid treat!