The five-hour journey from that opening exchange is almost all downhill,and it’s a gruelling watch. Chastain and Isaac are in every scene,usually just the two of them,mostly in the lovely three-storey house that is by turns haven and battleground. They are terrific actors,but they can’t quite rise above the staginess of the setting or the exchanges,the self-conscious therapiness of it all,and the very particular circumstances of their characters.

He’s a non-religious Jew wracked with hang-ups about his Jewishness;she’s a mergers-and-acquisitions high-flyer whose restlessness is both engine and brake. He’s the primary caregiver to their young daughter,but his part-time career is a raging success;she is soaring career-wise,if only family life would stop dragging her back to earth. Their specificity makes them real in a sense,but it also prevents the series speaking more broadly to the central question of what makes a relationship work or fail. It can only really addressthis relationship,these two people,this unique set of circumstances.

Many of the key plot points from Bergman’s original are invoked here,though the dynamic is flipped on its head. I won’t say too much about the specifics,other than to note that updating the sexual politics has had the unfortunate result of making Mira a hopelessly unsympathetic and mercurial figure,and Jonathan a borderline saint.