'Stepford Wives'The Prequel

Rating: 7/10 (11 February 2009)

"Revolutionary Road" is the other Kate Winslet vehicle of the season, based on an acclaimed novel by Richard Yateswhom I heard interviewed, drunkenly aggrandizing himself in an unearthed tape played on an NPR show. This one is clearly about something more focused than in all the broad hype: the hopeless, stultifying life that being a suburban housewife was in the '50s and '60s. Whether Winslet's "April" had little talent as an actress or it was just wasted where it was exercised, pearls before and among swine, isn't clear. (Though hubbie Frank, played by ol' Leonardo DiCaprio, sure did go on about it in an annoying case of verbal diarrhea.) But, damn, I'd sure love the little woman to clasp me around the knees, and urge me to forsake gainful employment to "find myself" in Paris, where she'd support mebecause I am just that wonderful thing: a man! But Frank only reluctantly buys in, and especially after he takes a mistress and is offered a promotion at the office, it's clearer than ever that Paris is for Aprilit's her only hope for an alternative to decades of Stepfordian drudgery. Michael Shannon provides great, dark comic relief, as the son of a neighbor on furlough from electroconvulsive therapy (shock treatments) at a mental hospital. Nominated for a best supporting actor award, clearly he's intended as one of the few voices of sanity in conformo-land.