Bob Balaban remarked in the Q&A after the premier screening of Marie and Bruce at Sundance that the interminable party scene seemed to continue after the movie stopped. It would be difficult to describe local reaction to the film better than that.
Dennis Harvey's Variety review, while taking pains to position the film in as marginal a market as possible, did skillfully describe the challenge that Tom Cairns took on in bringing Marie and Bruce to the screen.
Harvey's review struck me as an honest - and rather flattering - response to an alien phenomenon.
The Hollywood Reporter however, wanted clarity: the film must either be a satire, or it must be absurd. Having elements of both satire and absurdity was evidently too much to bear.
Comparing the dreams scenes to Harry Potter (!) and the dialogue to Ionesco, the Reporter's Kurt Honeycutt concludes that Wally Shawn didn't know what he wanted to say. Hmmm. (Honeycutt couldn't tell us either).
I hope the film soon finds an audience more comfortable with its ambitions.