You probably don’t know the name of Jeff Lipsky, but you owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. Over the last 30 years, as a distribution executive for various companies, he has been responsible for acquiring and marketing many of the arthouse films of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. It’s not much of a stretch to say that he invented the model of modern American independent cinema, shepherding films like A Woman Under the Influence, Stranger Than Paradise, Life Is Sweet, My Life as a Dog and many many more. So should you go see his own film, Flannel Pajamas, merely on that basis? Of course not. But you will want to keep in mind that this is a film made by someone who cut his teeth in the business with John Cassavetes and matured with Mike Leigh (whose producer Simon Channing-Williams is this film’s executive producer). In other words, while you may well dislike this film (many viewers have, as you can read on the Internet), that doesn’t make it a failure at what it set out to do. Flannel Pajamas charts the history of a romantic relationship between two thirtysomething New Yorkers, from meeting at a blind date through marriage and on to…well, not to give away too much. When I saw Lipsky’s first film, Childhood’s End (1997), I was repelled by the characters but had to recognize the rigor with which he presented them. The couple under dissection here is easier to take, but certainly far from the bipedal puppy dogs who populate most movies about love. The actors are Justin Kirk, who plays Andy on the Showtime series Weeds and was in the HBO production of Angels in America, and Julianne Nicholson, who will be familiar to television viewers for recurring roles on Law and Order: Criminal Intent and Ally McBeal. Both make the most of a demanding script. That may or may not be something you want to see on screen; you also may not be interested in hearing a lot of articulate dialogue that doesn’t always find its target. (If you’re able to make yourself clearly understood every time you speak to your partner, you need to run seminars explaining to the rest of us how to do it.)