They tried marriage, after knowing each other for a day. Then they tried divorce. Then marriage again - and divorce again. Finally, they lived happily ever after.

Obviously the new movie "Ira and Abby" doesn't offer up your typical Hollywood ending in the romance department.

In an age when even purportedly subversive romantic comedies end conventionally - marriage and baby, albeit not necessarily in that order - "Ira and Abby" is an unexpected meditation on the institution of marriage itself and whether it's relevant to today's would-be spouses.

Its protagonists (Jennifer Westfeldt and Chris Messina); their delightfully motley supporting cast of couples (Robert Klein and Judith Light, Frances Conroy and Fred Willard); and a host of unusual cameos (Jason Alexander, Darrell Hammond) dismantle the notion of marriage in America and posit the question: Is it worth it, when you can just be together anyway?

Westfeldt, seen most recently in ABC's "Notes from the Underbelly," wrote the screenplay, and it isn't her first foray into relationship musings: She co-wrote and co-starred in "Kissing Jessica Stein," about a straight woman trying on a same-sex relationship for size. So we thought she'd have some illuminating thoughts about modern love - the big-screen and real-world kinds (in her case, the real-world relationship is to Jon Hamm of "Mad Men").

Fortunately, we know her from way back, so she agreed to answer some e-mail questions about matrimony, holy or otherwise.

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asap: How did you get to thinking about the theme of marriage for this movie?

JW: The year that I wrote the first draft of the script, my boyfriend and I went to about nine weddings. That same year, three of our closest friends were getting divorced - all in their early thirties. Which kinda gets you looking at the wedding ceremonies in a different light. I have always been incredibly moved by weddings - I'm the first to cry, the first to be overwhelmed by the romanticism of it all, the toasts, the emotion of it, the fact that everyone in your life shows up. But at the end of the day, the statistics are that half of all marriages will end in divorce. Half. It's essentially a coin toss. ...

So during the nine-wedding year, I would watch these beautiful ceremonies and these romantic vows ... and just space out and ponder the fact that in roughly half of the cases, at some point, those vows would turn out not to be true. And during one of the ceremonies, I just had this funny, irreverent vision of a couple who got married and divorced (to each other) three times, where their wedding vows degenerated each time into less lofty promises, more "keepable" vows.

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asap: Define marriage as you see it.

JW: I have been with my boyfriend for almost 10 years now, and we essentially do have a marriage - we love each other, we're committed to each other, we live together, we have a dog and a house and a life together, we are a couple. But we're not married. ... A traditional "marriage" obviously also includes a legal contract, and shared finances and taxes and last names (sometimes) and different terms (husband and wife, or husband and husband or wife and wife, in far too few states -!), a different perception from society, maybe a different level of respect, etc. This is also what I'm trying to sort out, in the movie and in my life, frankly. Whether or not those trimmings - the societal acceptance and support, the legal contract that binds, the "institution" of marriage - if those things really help a relationship or hurt it. ...

I wonder somehow if having the legal contract and the perceived permanence of the institution somehow allows people to take each other for granted more - or to not strive each day to earn each other, y'know? ... That's kinda what happens in the film - these two people ... decide that the most truthful way they can be together is to choose to be together every day - not to be bound together because they signed a piece of paper.

... While I was writing this script, I would talk to a lot of people who were in second (and even third) marriages and ask them how they returned to this institution that didn't work for them the first time - if they had a new perspective, a new attitude, how their vows changed this time around, etc. Almost everyone said, "No, we pretty much said the same things"! So "'til death do us part" and "forsaking all others" on the second or third time around with no trace of irony. Like a "This time, we mean it." All that stuff is hard for me to process. ... I guess I'm truly a romantic, even though some have perceived my film as anti-marriage, or as an anti-romantic comedy. I want people to mean what they say and promise each other - I want it all to be true. So I'm working on my definition.

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asap: What is accurate - and inaccurate - about marriage as portrayed in Hollywood? What movies strike you that have gotten relationships right?

JW: It's always more challenging to find relationship accuracy in comedies than in dramas, naturally - so much comedy arises from preposterous situations, whimsical ideas, heightened realities, etc. It's easy to find truthful (and often bleak) portraits of marriage and relationships in dramatic fare, as the conflicts and pain in relationships tend to be the focus of the drama. And there's such a long list of those wonderful films one doesn't usually have to look farther than award season to find a spate of them (my fave from last year was "The Lives of Others," one of the best films I have seen in years; I also thought "The Painted Veil" last year was an underseen and amazing portrait of a new marriage).

I think it's exciting when a romantic comedy can find the truth and pain in relationships, and still find the funny. Those are the kind of films I really admire in the genre (the genre I have tried to write in) - the ones that aren't afraid to be truthful and accurate and often painful in showing relationships, alongside the whimsy and sometimes heightened aspect of the comedy. I look to comedies like "Hannah and Her Sisters," "Manhattan," "Jerry Maguire," "When Harry Met Sally," "As Good As It Gets," last year's "Little Miss Sunshine."

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asap: Which famous Hollywood marriages seem the most distorted or caricatured to you?

JW: ... There are so many that seem caricatured, simply due to the amount that flame out so very quickly - we obviously see so much of that in the tabloids and it's all kinda crazy. I think it's really hard for people in this business to make a relationship or a marriage work - it's hard to find normalcy when you live an incredibly abnormal life. But then there's Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman - they all give me great hope that you can be in this crazy business and still have a lasting, wonderful marriage.

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Ted Anthony is the editor of asap.