MOVIE REVIEW 'We Don't Live Here Anymore': gloomy drama

The plot and performances help viewers identify with characters.
By PHIL VILLARREAL
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
If you're looking for a pick-me-up, "We Don't Live Here Anymore" is not the way to go.
John Curran's bleak, emotion-drenched sex drama is based on two short stories by Andre Dubus, whose work inspired the Oscar-nominated "In the Bedroom" (2001), which is much admired but received absolutely no notices referring to it as "the feel-good movie of the year."
"We Don't Live Here Anymore," in which two friendly couples get a little too friendly, is no more uplifting than "In the Bedroom," which explored a middle-aged couple's simmering rage after their son's murder.
The new film seems painstakingly crafted to terrify the audience about love, lust, the inability to tell one from the other and the way each is capable of destroying the other. The film latches onto us like a weight and drags us down to depths of despair, leaving us, like its characters, hurt and vacant.
We wouldn't feel so poor if we didn't identify with them. With bone-cutting writing and harrowingly effective performances, the movie makes us care.
Plot
We start with a late-night, drunken, music-blaring social evening with the two sets of attractive spouses. Terry Linden (Laura Dern) dances with Edith Evans (Naomi Watts) by the stereo, as pals Jack Linden (Mark Ruffalo) and Hank Evans (Peter Krause, of HBO's "Six Feet Under") smile and stare at the women. The flicker in the men's eyes makes it pretty obvious that each is ogling the other's wife.
The beer is all gone, so Jack volunteers to be the good sport who runs out to pick up the next six-pack. Edith insists she needs some fresh air and, with a little too much spring, hops out the door behind Jack, while Terry and Hank slip each other a knowing glance. We follow Jack and Edith on their beer run, which is really an excuse to share a long kiss and set up their next in a series of steamy forest meadow rendezvous.
After the alcohol and the festivities have faded away, the couples are left to have it out, volleying accusations and hurtful jabs back and forth. Hank and Edith treat each other coldly and standoffishly, internalizing their pain, while Jack and Terry blow up with screaming, plate-smashing battles worthy of Madonna and Sean Penn.
Familiar dialogue
The dialogue will be familiar to anyone who's ever engaged in a never-ending argument with a lover who knows you too well.
These are people with too much time on their hands. The men are both lazy professors at a local college, and the women seem not to do much of anything. As the days pass, the four characters spend time with each other in every possible combination. A cross-marriage, opposite-sex meeting is filled with unbridled lust, and same-sex pals deal out encouragement. The film rearranges its principals like a Rubik's Cube, while the stunned, silent children, who in their own way know more about what's going on than their parents, look on in terror.
Sad conclusions
The film falls to a number of distressing conclusions: 1. Marriage is crummy. It depletes the soul and saps a relationship of its mystery and excitement. That's why affairs, with their heart-skipping thrills, seem so appealing.
2. Adultery is even worse than marriage. The stress of living a double life can drive you insane, and it hurts everyone you love, especially your kids.
3. Leaving a cheating spouse to become single is more frightening than any of the above. The act of abandoning the devil you know is tantamount to ripping off your own arm.
Have a nice day.