Slamdance Film Festival 2009

Dax and Olive are in a happy marriage. As her father disintegrates into Alzheimer’s, Olive decides she’s in a hurry to have a baby, but Dax doesn’t want their happy little world to change. After one too many glasses of wine one night, Olive pokes a hole through her diaphragm. When Dax discovers her deception he panics. Not wanting to lose the love of his life, but desperately not wanting a baby, he begins to slip Olive birth control in her morning coffee. For a time they are both happy, each thinking their plan is working but slowly their Quiet Little Marriage begins to unravel.

Small and personal to a degree that makes it universally relatable, A Quiet Little Marriage is the kind of film where you’re convinced that you really know or are related to one of the characters, or that moments of it were stolen from your actual life. Tackling a theme as intense and complex as devotion, these characters show the extraordinary range that’s possible in every day life. Anchored by performances as raw and honest in their depiction of tenderness as in their portrayal of deceit, Marriage is superbly crafted, tightly reined and remarkably fun to watch for something so personal.

- Drea Clark, Executive Director/Chair of Feature Narrative Programming