Revolutionary Road (**1/2)

Sam Mendes, of "American Beauty" acclaim, tells this distressing story about a young couple's discontentment in their own individual lives causing the unraveling of their marriage in 1050's suburban Connecticut. The Wheeler couple is convinced by the local Real Estate agent (Kathy Bates) to move themselves and 2 young children, into the most beautiful perfect little house on Revolutionary Road. Despite it's proximity to the very suburbanite neighbors they feel far superior than they move in citing that it is far enough out as to make them feel they have distanced themselves from "those people". April Wheeler (Winslet) is having a difficult time coming to terms with her non-existent acting career. Frank Wheeler (DiCaprio) is dispassionate about his monotonous office job but keeps it because it's rather lucrative. Seeking some sense of excitement or adventure in their lives they each find themselves separately making morally questionable decisions which, unknowingly to each other, causes tension to mount at home.

In a nutshell, you have a very dysfunctional relationship within the walls of their own home that goes out of it's way to paint the picture of the perfect family to the rest of the world. As if moving into the fairytale little home will solve the deeper seeded problems between them. When that doesn't work, they impulsively agree to move to Paris where they share the same delusional fantasy of reinvigorating their inner artist and finding true love and happiness.

The film itself is getting critical praise and being highly touted as a certainty to firmly grab a Best Picture nomination but I don't see it as being that caliber. I may be wrong, I often am on these matters, it's just my opinion that this film is nowhere near the cinematic experience that "American Beauty" was. At the end of the day there are many things I can appreciate as this type of thing happens in the real world in far to many families but to sit and watch it for the 2 hour run time wasn't that pleasurable of an experience, frankly. It was difficult to watch, maybe it just hit home and I subconsciously resisted and have my own issues to deal with. I don't know.

That being said, DiCaprio was great as usual and Winslet was the consistent powerhouse she usually is and watching them work together in each scene made the movie tolerable for me. You absolutely cannot catch that woman "acting" in any scene. She takes on some pretty emotional material here and doesn't flinch. Part of the creepiness of her character is the bipolar way she moves from one scene to another. She makes April appear to be robotic, clearly some serious emotional instability that Winslet hammers home. DiCaprio gives Frank a supreme confidence exteriorly when the reality is he is jealous, afraid and insecure internally.