It stars Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver as a couple going through a bi-coastal divorce complicated by custody issues surrounding their son.

Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Julie Hagerty, and Merritt Wever appear in supporting roles.

Announced in November 2017, with the cast joining that same month, the film was shot in New York City and Los Angeles between January and April of the following year.

The couple is experiencing marital troubles and sees a mediator, who suggests they each write down what they love about one another, but Nicole is too embarrassed to read hers aloud, and they decide to forgo counseling.

When Nicole is offered a starring role in a television pilot in Los Angeles, she decides to leave Charlie's company and go to live with her mother in West Hollywood, taking their son, Henry, with her.

Excited by the news that he has won a MacArthur Fellowship grant, Charlie visits his family in LA, and Nicole serves him with divorce papers.

In court, Nora and Jay argue aggressively on behalf of their clients, leading to a series of character assassinations.

Disillusioned with the legal process, the couple decide to meet in private, but their good intentions do not keep the discussion from becoming increasingly vicious.

Matthew Maher, Gideon Glick, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Raymond J. Lee, Mary Wiseman, and Becca Blackwell appear in the film as unnamed actors in Charlie's theater group.

The site wrote that "normally, these (estimated) numbers would be disappointing," but, "given the theaters and more limited seating, as well as awareness of imminent streaming access within the month", it was sufficient for Netflix.

The website's consensus reads: "Observing a splintering union with compassion and expansive grace, the powerfully acted Marriage Story ranks among writer-director Noah Baumbach's best works.

[36] Critic Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote of the film: "At once funny, scalding, and stirring, built around two bravura performances of incredible sharpness and humanity, it's the work of a major film artist, one who shows that he can capture life in all its emotional detail and complexity — and, in the process, make a piercing statement about how our society now works.

"[38] In his review for The Hollywood Reporter, Jon Frosch concurred, writing: "Other American films about divorce have portrayed this phenomenon — the legal process driving and shaping the couple's feelings rather than vice versa — but none with the force and clarity of this one [...] It's also funny and, when you least expect it (and most need it), almost unbearably tender, thanks in large part to the sensational leads, who deliver the deepest, most alive and attuned performances of their careers.

"[41] In a mixed review, GQ's David Levesley opined that the film was "fundamentally, a good piece of cinema", but disliked the unacknowledged upper-class privilege that the characters possessed, commenting: "The world of third-wave coffee, delicatessens and Upper West Side therapy has been done to death and does not speak to as much of the human condition as the people wading through it themselves seem to think.

"[42] Armond White of The National Review also panned the film's bourgeois themes and the lead actors' performances, writing: "This story is really about class rivalry clouded by a sex-and-cinema surface.

The obnoxious sentimentality of Marriage Story forces a filmmaker's self-righteousness on us [...] It is Johansson and Driver who suffer Baumbach's superficiality.

[45] Driver punching a wall has been repurposed to represent general arguments over trivial matters in which a participant becomes angry and overreacts.