“Marriage Story” opens with spouses Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) each reciting a list of everything they love and admire about each other. It’s almost unbearably adorable, so much so that writer-director Noah Baumbach immediately pulls out the rug: These lists are an exercise assigned by a counselor who’s seeing the couple through their divorce.
Over the course of this poignant, hilarious, heartbreaking saga, Baumbach performs an incisive autopsy on this couple. As their breakup brings out the best and worst of them, we will learn why they worked so well together and why they needed to separate from each other; if there’s a plot or traditional dramatic tension here, it’s over whether or not these two can remain amicable enough to stay close to each other and to be effective parents to their son, Henry (Azhy Robertson, “After the Wedding”).