Review: 'A Teacher' Director Hannah Fidell's '6 Years' Starring Taissa Farmiga & Ben Rosenfield

High school and college graduation mark two points of conflict as they both compress four years into a definitive decision along the lines of “what happens next?” Director Hannah Fidell works around these signposts, spotting subtler shifts as springboards from which to catch a character’s subjective desires and anxieties, but not necessarily the facts. 2013’s “A Teacher” saw the director obscure the taboo subject matter of a student-teacher affair via a murkier and elusive approach, and with her latest “6 Years,” she cuts the script loose for a look at a long-term relationship under duress.

READ MORE: Hannah Fidell Talks '6 Years,' Bringing 'A Teacher' To HBO, And More

In this case, the relationship is between Mel and Dan, two students at UT Austin, played by Taissa Farmiga ("American Horror Story") and Ben Rosenfield (“Boardwalk Empire”). The pair are wonderfully adept at the range of Fidell’s improvised aims (the script was actually a 40-page...