Finnerty Steeves is an actress who has put in good work on dozens of stages over the past couple of decades; on Broadway in “Brighton Beach Memoirs”; on TV on “Orange is the New Black” (as Beth the “baby killer”) and in films like “Morning Glory” and “Frances Ha.” Also, a lot of commercials.
As a working actress, she knows the world enough to submit her first screenplay, which has been made into an engaging record of a marriage in “Before/During/After.”
It’s about a woman who seems to be happy in her 15-year marriage, judging from the flashbacks to the “before” times to a good looking if taciturn lug (Jeremy Davidson). But, while trying out for a new play about a woman in a similarly troubled union, it rattles her, makes her nearly ruin her audition, and mostly makes her thinks about the scenes in her life that led her to where she is.
Constantly shifting time frames is an easy way for some movies to look more interesting than they would actually be; in “Before/During/After,” though, it’s as natural as flipping through old photos where wildly differing eras appear, each with visual details that may indicate potential trouble spots.
The cracks in this marriage are plain enough: She decides she wants a baby all of a sudden, which throws him. Worse, he’d been having an affair while out of town on his boat transporting business.
Their solution is relatable as well: going to what turns out to be a string of therapists, one more inept than the next, providing much of the humor in the film. It also allows what turns out to be a large cast of recognizable faces have some fun in their roles, from Kate Burton to Richard Masur to Deborah Rush.