In “Smashed,” an alcoholic couple —Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron Paul as Kate and Charlie Hannah — have their marriage tested when one of them decides to stop drinking. It’s a movie about alcoholism made by a director and starring actors who acknowledge knowing little about the subject.

“I don’t know that experiencing it was necessary,” director James Ponsoldt says. “The fact is everybody struggles with something potentially life-altering, at some point in their lives. And so it was on knowing people and exploring people and our sometimes surprisingly common problems.”