Fortysomething pair risk alienation as they pursue lost youth

Noah Baumbach has been documenting his own life passage in narrative films ever since his post-college debut, 1995's Kicking and Screaming, so it makes all kinds of sense that his new film posits the disconcerting conundrum of the mid-40s adult who finds his life becoming ever more staid, even as the desire to retain the last fringes of his youthful self begins the inexorable retreat into actual maturation. For many of us, this comes almost entirely against our wills: Before we know it, our minds are dulled, our bodies betray us, as our children begin to sap our lives right from under us.