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More bitter than sweet, director Morgan Dews' painstaking documentary about his grandmother Allis' troubled married life raising four children in Hartford, Connecticut--that she documented with endless Dictaphone recordings, home movies, and photos--is as much a time capsule of the Eastern Seaboard's '50s and '60s era fascination with psychiatrists and questioning of social constraints as it is about a failed attempt at carrying on an open marriage. Dews discovered the materials, labeled by Allis with the film's title, after her death in 2001 and set about learning the intimate details of Allis' unconventional marriage to a temperamental insurance executive named Charley, of whom she never spoke after his death. Allis and Charley were both married to other people when they met, and their mutual adultery set the stage for a disconnected union maintained via recordings that the couple would send back and forth while Charley traveled abroad on business and pleasure.

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