scoup I was not repulsed by Laura Dern's clear case of anorexia.I wanted to punch her in her face. Her husband probably can not stand to look at her and the marriage is failing because who can respect a shrew like her. The scene where she is having sex with him is disgusting - all bones are showing and the sinewy muscles creep me out.It is very distracting to watch a movie when an actor's glaring personal problem overshadows all else. I spent most of the movie imagining her own personal self-loathing which has driven her to this place. Successful family and career, but something else below the surface. Directors should realize that it does not help a movie when they employ actors with problems. I would have made her eat each day in front of me before I began filming. I stopped watching her cable show for the same reason. I wish she gets helps.This is not a bashing post, but I am truly tired of watching movies and seeing this issue.So many people in the world who can't get 3 squares a day...what a lucky society we live in...all hail the pursuit of size zero.

A V Amazing and disturbing. That's what I thought when the credit for this film began to roll. I wanted to go back and see certain scenes again. I wanted to listen to the dialogues again. I did. I wanted to clap for all the four main leads for making the whole story so real. And my feeling after the movie ended said it all. I just sat there marveling at the manner in which the film tackles the issue of adultery head-on. I have not read the short stories on which this film is based and I don't know if I want to read them now. I think this movie has conveyed enough. The first scene - 2 men, 2 women. A get-together. Which are the couples? Hmmm..Not Sure. (This could be a spoiler) 2nd Scene - Yes! There it is, I thought. Now that we are already into it what is remaining to be shown? This is: The confrontation, the revenge, the escaping (metaphorically - from the failure of the respective marriages), the justification and finally facing the consequences and hence defining the road for the future. All this makes the movie. The ending is beautiful and and apt. The dialogues are the backbone of this film. When all the four characters know what is going on (this is a spoiler) how can they deal or come through the whole situation? Through communication of course - verbal and non-verbal. And what the characters speak or show so painfully conveys what is going on inside them. And yes - children do understand if parents are happy with each other or not. At times silent witnesses; at times trying to bring them together in their own little ways. The music and the settings (houses and outdoors) are well chosen to convey the moods of the characters. The editing is such that the scenes actually tell us what thoughts flow into and from the minds of the four leads. It's a lovely movie all in all - a small indie film that should not be missed by any hardcore movie lover.

ryknight My expectations were probably too high, despite being wary of the second adaptation of one of my favorite authors. I didn't really care for IN THE BEDROOM because it didn't telegraph all the nuance of emotion found in Dubus' perfect, concise short fiction. Looks like it didn't work this time either.The credits tell us this film is based on both novellas "We Don't Live Here Anymore" and "Adultery" yet it only incorporates the last paragraph of the latter. Without the rest of those pages, this turnaround for Edith (Naomi Watts)--which the filmmakers plop into the last three minutes after spending the majority of the previous 99 minutes in her lover Jack's POV--doesn't have its desired denouement effect on an audience: we just think Edith has given up, not made a healthy choice to better her life and grow up. The filmmakers made a similar misstep in their handling of Jack's final choice. In the end of the eponymous novella, our narrator Jack (played by Mark Ruffalo in the film) tells us his spirit is dying in a marriage going nowhere even though like Tolstoy's Ivan Ivanovitch--which is briefly referenced in both works--he appears to have found the light; yet in the film, we witness a man ultimately choosing family because it's the right thing to do--a completely different emotional journey.I really like all four leads but I just found myself wanting more from each of them. Maybe that way we could have seen more of Dubus' original intentions and character arcs with his novellas. In the stories, the characters are three dimensional and you can forgive their shortcomings because of it. In this film, everybody comes off selfish: you can't root for any of them. On the page we witness redemption, even in Jack's selfish choice to "sacrifice" his future happiness. On screen we see an actor playing a man who just wants people to be happy--and he thinks he can be if he gives up his affair.At least the actors were all swinging for the fences. Peter Krause gets the least screen time but he was the best of the leads and the closest to the character Dubus created. I hope he escapes the shadow of HBO because I've thought he's a special actor ever since I was one of the ten people to tune in to SPORTS NIGHT on a regular basis. Laura Dern is given a meaty role in Terry, Jack's jilted wife, but she just plays every scene like Nicole Kidman in EYES WIDE SHUT, only not as good. Terry was created well before Kubrick made that last film but it's hard to get Kidman's panty-clad lustful confession out of your head watching Dern act mad and yell not only because they're similar scenes but because Kidman is still stunning and Dern looks tired. I know, superficial, but that's what I thought. On the other hand, Naomi Watts is very sexy and gives it her all but she's just a sketch of a hurt person, not a well rounded or believably motivated character. I didn't feel we learned all that much from her speech in the hotel or that scene of her crying--they seemed like plot devices the filmmakers had to use to justify their choices with the last act. The last act doesn't work because of that final scene with Edith and also because of what I said about Jack's choice. Ruffalo is very good, but he's playing a different Jack than the Jack on Dubus' pages.Bottom line: read the novellas. Especially "Finding A Girl In America", it's my favorite. All three of the novellas were published in a book under the title of the film and it has a great introduction from Dubus' son, Andre Dubus III, who wrote HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG (also manhandled on screen). It was the essay by the screenwriter that made me give the movie a shot but I don't think the film works as well as it could have. They should have either made it just that first story or actually explored the whole series of novellas for a movie that could have become a classic to stand alongside something like Bergman's SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. Maybe you should just rent that.

evanston_dad A whole bunch of talent is wasted in this dismal film that wanders all over the place but goes nowhere.Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts, Laura Dern....come on! If you've got a star roster like that and can't come up with anything better than this film, your right to make movies should be revoked. This is one of those films about a bunch of late-thirty-somethings who have too much time on their hands and spend all of it whining about how miserable they are. The problem is that none of them are likable, and we're not given any reason to care about any of them, so it's much like going to a party full of a bunch of people you don't know and will never see again, complaining about lives you know nothing about and will never need to. If I found myself at a party like that, I'd want to leave and go get ice cream or something, which is what I wanted to do while watching this movie.Grade: F