Overall, this was a depressing and disappointing movie that had nothing new to say

Rating: 2/10 (2 March 2017)

I expected a good movie. The lead actors are well known and normally good at what they do, as is the director. How disappointing then, to discover that this combination resulted in a monumental failure to connect.
Tolstoy said that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" and I was willing to explore that premise in this movie. But it's difficult to care about characters that are so two dimensional. As the movie ended, I still felt that I barely knew the people in it.
There was no real storytelling here. There was literally no story. Just an unhappy couple lurching from one fight to the next throughout the entire movie. They are both unfaithful, immature and behave irrationally. Unfortunately, neither of them is likable or sympathetic. The R rating of the movie is justified by the frequent profanity, several sex scenes and the inevitable (by which I mean; you could see it coming a mile off), self-administered abortion.
April (Winslet) seems almost bipolar with her constant changes of mood, swinging from calm and loved-up to full-on screaming hate, at head spinning speed. Her solution to fix this mutual unhappiness, is for them all to relocate to Paris. But she'd forgotten the most important fact, that wherever you go, you take yourself with you. Sometimes it's not external factors that make you unhappy (or happy) it is what is within you. Eh. So she has a lackluster quickie with the neighbor (who is madly in love with her - poor bastard)
Frank (DiCaprio) is also clearly dissatisfied with his life, experiments with infidelity and is still no happier. After some persuasion, he goes along with April's crazy idea and there is a brief honeymoon period while they put together their plans for the move. But it all quickly falls apart again and their screaming matches resume.
The most interesting character was the man from the asylum. At least he said what he thought, not what people wanted to hear.
For me, the most disturbing aspect of this movie was something that seems all too familiar, a husband deciding for his wife that they should have a baby, when she clearly doesn't want one. I know, times and (men's) attitudes were different back then but the end result was not thus surprising. Frank deliberately waits until the last day of her 12 week of pregnancy has passed before he tells April he didn't even want the baby either.. when it is now too late to safely do anything about it. Nice. What was a woman to do then, if she didn't want the child she was carrying? Choices were limited and the risks very high. But women have always, and will always, try to make those choices for themselves, whether men want them to or not. I'd like to think some of the sadness he shows later, is because of those choices he made. But probably not.
The scene near the end, with April acting all "Stepford wife" preparing breakfast the morning after another terrible fight.. now *that* was really creepy. I was expecting her to have poisoned the food, or to suddenly get out a big knife and start stabbing Frank.. anything other than just sending hubby off to work with a wave. Then I thought, well maybe she's going to hop off to Paris (on her own or with the kids) that would have been perfect. that would have been a good conclusion to the movie, not a "happy" ending as such but still.. Go live the life you want lady! But no.
Overall this was a depressing and disappointing movie that had nothing new to say about unhappy families, the human condition or anything else for that matter. Two wasted hours.