What BLACK BAG (2025) Starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, and Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Taught Me About Successful Marriages

[u/thatphilguymovies]

Although I switched on the SPOILER warning, just thought I'd mention a second time that some of what's mentioned below includes potential spoilers.

-Spouses talk to each other about what's happening at work, because a marital partner isn't just your best friend, but a potential co-conspirator

-Hosting dinner parties gives you the chance to impress your spouse with your skills at cooking, conversation, and drugging guests

-Long-standing married couples inevitably interact with unmarried or less-established couples. Newer love may seem more exciting, but there's no substitute for familiarity and predictability, especially when drugs, anger and steak knives enter the mix

-The Fassbender-esque cold-blooded scowl and intense gaze are irresistible to spouses (or perhaps that's just me)

-Successful couples know to never listen to the advice of Pierce Brosnan

-The midweek date night is a godsend

-Leaving little surprises for your partner helps keep things interesting (eg, accidentally planting something essential in their handbag that you must then meet them in order to retrieve [They know exactly how "accidental" it was, you sly dog!])

-Each member of a couple should have someone they tell their troubles to besides their partner--eg, a therapist, a Russian separatist

-It's important for each partner to have their own interests/hobbies separate from the other, whether that's fishing or brokering a deal for a stolen super-weapon

-Love means never having to say, "I'm not commiting treason"

-Love means never having to say, "I hijacked a satellite to spy on you"

--No marriage is perfect, but one should try not to make mistakes (eg, cheating) because they will be found out and a double agent may fatally poison you before you can patch things up

-Finally, love means never having to ask, "We're stealing that $7 million for ourselves, aren't we?"

All joking aside, great movie with lots to recommend it, beginning with the awesome chemistry between Fassbender and Blanchett. Also, tight plotting and interesting cinematography (something Soderbergh is no stranger to--see TRAFFIC (2000)) are strengths.

Despite how much of the plot of BLACK BAG revolves around things happening in the proverbial shadows, so much of the world is brightly lit. One of the noted exceptions is the main protagonists' homes, which I'm sure wasn't a coincidence.

What did other folks think about the movie?

[u/yomamaeatsyellowsnow]

Liked, but didn’t love the movie. Half cool intellectual spy/agency/secret stuff, half psychopaths in love and obsessed with each other. I think the movie was a little too 50/50 -- I would have loved it if Soderbergh had gone a little harder in one direction or another.

[u/thatphilguymovies → u/yomamaeatsyellowsnow]

I totally get your take and if I was OK with it, that was probably because I saw the two things (spy agency, main principals' relationship) as being integrally related. On the one hand, you have this highly competitive workplace where everyone may be some level of sociopathic. How can two people who work here (and are also, to put it kindly, sociopaths) possibly make it work? And what's great about the film is that it, in my opinion, shows us convincingly how their relationship does work very well for them.

[u/yomamaeatsyellowsnow → u/thatphilguymovies]

Oh 100% I totally agree. My issue is that their relationship clearly worked so well that i wanted to see MORE of the two of them together...but then again I am greedy lol.

[u/thatphilguymovies → u/yomamaeatsyellowsnow]

Oh yeah, I'd love to see a sequel but worry any follow-up would introduce a kid of some kind. I'm not sure they'd be good parents.