Mixed Couples 1980

The time is 1927, the place an airplane hangar in New Jersey where two couples wait for the fog to lift so their chartered plane can fly them to Washington. Their meeting is quite by chance, but also ironic, as it develops that the four had switched partners twenty-five years earlier, and haven't seen each other since. One couple has settled into suburban bliss, he a professor, she a housewife and mother; the other couple are Park Avenue types, he a rich, hard-driving businessman, and his wife (after all these years) still an aspiring actress. Cautious and civil at first, their conversation turns gradually bitchier (and funnier) as time hangs heavy and old enmities are revived. As their veneers crumble, it is clear that neither couple has benefited as much as they had expected from their marital switch, and that beneath their pretense lies aridity, although tempered by the witty hijinks they go through to convince themselves (and us) that all's well in their reordered worlds.