oel and Ethan Coen make two types of movies: horrific, brooding peeks inside deteriorating human psyches and manic screwball comedies. The former category would include their debut feature, Blood Simple, as well as Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, Fargo, and The Man Who Wasn’t There; in the latter, Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Big Lebowski, O’ Brother, Where Art Thou?, and their latest effort, Intolerable Cruelty. These two Coen categories, however, tend to bleed together and play off one another. Even their darkest films could be classified as comedies, perhaps because the Coens recognize that very rarely in life is humor altogether absent- even in situations that call for such drastic measures as using a wood-chipper to dispose of a corpse.

With that overlapping and filmographic symbiosis in mind, Intolerable Cruelty plays like the flip-side to the Coens’ previous film, The Man Who Wasn’t There. The earlier movie, a black-and-white send-up of 40's film noir, is the duo’s most somber outing, with Billy Bob Thornton’s title character one of the blankest, most uncharismatic protagonists in cinema. Their new film is the most thoroughly delightful and hilariously sustained they’ve ever made. In fact, besides Preston Sturges, of whose classic screwball humor there are definite echoes here, the movie that Intolerable Cruelty reminded me most of is Down with Love, its only real rival, at this point, for comedic picture of the year. Both films are deliciously stylish, breezily paced anti-romantic comedies, chock-full of splendidly astute insights into the nature of sexual politics, without the slightest hint of bloated self-importance.

Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Marilyn, a professional trophy wife, with precisely two goals in mind at all times: 1) find rich, philandering men to marry, and 2) take them to the financial cleaners in court once things start to pop and fizzle, which Marilyn counts on happening as quickly as possible after the "I do’s" are exchanged. George Clooney is Miles Massey, an effortlessly charming, equally unsentimental top-notch divorce attorney up for any challenging case no matter how seemingly unwinnable. He first comes in contact with Marilyn after her private investigator catches her then-husband (Edward Herrmann) in a motel room about to have kinky choo-choo sex (yes, you read that correctly- remember, this is a Coen bros. movie, after all) with his mistress. With both characters so cynical, persuasive, and utterly ruthless, it’s clear from the start that these two would be a perfect match, if only they weren’t too cynical and ruthless for their own good.

Clooney’s Miles is the polar opposite of Billy Bob Thornton’s Man Who Wasn’t There. Where Thornton’s character was a hopelessly anonymous, profoundly unremarkable Everyman, Clooney’s is truly exceptional in virtually every way. He’s rich, handsome, successful, and famous within his profession (and among serial divorcees). His personal philosophy is that "living is struggle, challenge, destruction of one’s opponent" and, thus, compromise equals death. Put simply, Miles is the personification of brashly detached Cool just as Clooney himself might be the truest, finest movie star working in Hollywood today. Zeta-Jones has never been more luminous than she is here as Marilyn, whom she plays for both full comic and femme-fatale potential. Feeling momentarily sorry for one duped beau, she quips, "You know you’ll always be my favorite husband."

Roger Deakins has shot all of the Coens’ films from their 1991 masterpiece Barton Fink on, providing each its own distinct visual strategy. Intolerable Cruelty is no exception. Deakins’ lensing, superb as ever, aids the film in no small part in creating its luxuriously smooth veneer. A few shots are almost too perfect, painterly snapshots captured from amidst the film’s breathlessly paced plotting. The film seems to move as quickly as its two primaries think, never dwelling too long or hard on any one plot point because Miles and Marilyn certainly wouldn’t- except, of course, for the romantic sparks flying sporadically between the two of them, which is at the heart of the film’s focus.

Speaking of hearts, Intolerable Cruelty does actually have one, despite its slyly cynical packaging and all the wink-wink suggestions otherwise. Like Down with Love, it’s, above all, about the tricky balancing act of romance and its natural extension, marriage. In different ways, both films suggest that it’s equality that’s the key to the game; Miles and Marilyn are only able to finally play straight with one another and accept their mutual feelings once their financial situations match as well as their dispositions. Though Intolerable Cruelty may be something of a farce, it’s unrealistic to pretend that finance never plays a role in how and why we court our potential mates. This is a film in which a pre-nuptial agreement being torn in half is the ultimate testament to true love.