Although John Curran's film is based, like In the Bedroom, on stories by Andre Dubus, and boasts a splendid group of stars (Mark Ruffalo, Laura Dern, Peter Krause, and Naomi Watts), We Don't Live Here Anymore--a slow, self-consciously sophisticated portrait of upper-middle-class marital angst on the campus of a Northeastern university--boasts little of the earlier picture's power and dramatic resonance. Ruffalo and Krause play English department colleagues who have affairs with one another's wives (the unkempt Dern and the radiant Watts), but the tone here is far from the brittle academic tragicomedy of a classic such as Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? What passes for plot involves the quartet's misery over their domestic problems, guilt as suspicions mount about the rampant infidelity, and attempts to balance their individual desires with familial responsibilities, especially towards their children. It's all played with ostentatious seriousness, as though it were revealing great truths about human nature, but for all its pretensions to depth and significance, the picture feels like a gloomy, if somewhat sanitized, soap opera that's ultimately unconvincing. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)
We Don't Live Here Anymore
Warner, 99 min., R, VHS: $38.50, DVD: $27.95, Dec. 14 Volume 20, Issue 1
We Don't Live Here Anymore
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