Faces is unflinching in its portrayal of the things we do for love. Intimate, cruel and loving, its grinning close-ups infinitely sad, it is the night-long journey to the epicenter of a marriage on the rocks. An L.A. business executive (John Marley) is jarred out of complacency in his marriage and spends the night with a call-girl (Gena Rowlands). His wife (Lynn Carlin) picks up a friendly young stud (Seymour Cassel) in a discotheque; in the morning she attempts suicide. The film represents a labor of love by the artists, which is what it takes to create the feel of life captured unawares-the lie in a laugh or the truth in an averted glance. The bust-up comes almost mid-chuckle, so ingrained are the habits of cohabitation. Ray Carney notes, "While the style offers...continuous shifts of tone and feeling, and multiple points of view, the characters represent limitations and constraints on consciousness....However doomed, (Cassavetes' characters) are still smarter, more passionate, more creative than almost any other figures in all of film."