A Better Man

Herb Larrimore, a 62-year-old insurance broker living in Manhattan, has never understood the subtleties of his marriage with Maggie, an unstable former showgirl and compulsive shopper. He provides a nice home, money and gifts for Maggie and their daughter, Phoebe, but Herb has never shown up for his family emotionally. Each day he works hard, comes home for a few hours and then goes to Manny's, an upscale restaurant he has frequented almost every night for 35 years. When Herb finds Maggie sitting naked on the cold wood floor of their home one night, raving half-lucidly about beauty, love and her deep dissatisfaction, he sees his wife is at the end of her rope, but he can't face this reality. Dumbstruck, Herb leaves the scene of his wife's breakdown and goes to Manny's. There, he dives into full-scale denial about Maggie's collapse, having dinner with an old flame who still loves him, enjoying the red carpet treatment of Manny's staff, reveling drunkenly with friends. The vivid tableau is broken only by the appearance of police, who hand Herb a new tragedy--but Herb is still a blind man. He denies his wife's mental illness even after Phoebe, who's 18, courageously reveals childhood horrors at the hands of her abusive mother. Harlow (Crashing) brings precision and insight to Herb's ordeal. Though some of her tough-guy dialogue is overdone, she digs deep into her native city; her Big Apple echoes and pulses with the heartbreak of her pathetic protagonist's plight. (May)