Bitter-sweet suburbia

Rating: 7/10 (10 April 2013)

Of course the last time Leo and Kate made a film together, they played youthful star- crossed lovers in a doomed relationship. Here, they are older and altogether disenchanted, although again the outcome is doomed. The former of course was "Titanic", for me an overblown, badly-written melodrama but here we have a warts and all examination of a stale marriage set in mid-50's "I like Ike" suburban USA, based on a modern literary classic. The special effects are certainly better in the film about the ship but I know which I prefer.
The film is an up close study of a marriage going wrong. On the face of it this youngish couple should be happy, like their neighbours seem to be. They have a nice house, he has a steady job, they have two kids and are considered the perfect couple. But like the song says, in every dream home a heartache and so it proves.
After dissecting the modern American marriage to a degree in "American Beauty'", Sam Jaafe (Winslet's husband at the time) gets the scalpel out again for this movie set some 50 years before. Some aspects however, whilst I appreciate they are in the original novel, don't work for me, in particular the introduction of the recently institutionalised son of an older neighbourly couple, who is there to point out the flaws in the Wheeler marriage which we presumably somehow mssed in the preceding hour. Add to that he uses some downright abhorrent phrases that only repel rather than enlighten with his parents saying nary a word against him.
I also feel De Caprio is miscast here. He looks too baby-faced for the part of the treacherous husband but Winslet does well as the frustrated wife who can only find release from her straitjacket with the most extreme of solutions.
Nevertheless the film has a gathering power as it builds up to its desperate climax and makes for strong, sobering viewing.