In "Marie and Bruce," a film version of Wallace Shawn's 1979 stage comedy about a bickering New York couple, tone is everything. Deadpan deliveries of cruel verbal abuse coupled with mock serious staging by director Tom Cairns give the film a touch of the absurd. While not quite as absurdist as, say, a Eugene Ionesco play, "Marie and Bruce" is not afraid to load the dialogue of its stars, Julianne Moore and Matthew Broderick, with unnatural, full-sentence verbiage that sounds at times like something a foreigner learning English might construct.

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