Les noces rebelles

Having been a 50s housewife with children at home and a husband who wanted to be anywhere but there, this movie was familiar territory. How many of us in those years simply packed our dreams away for the immediate necessity of putting food on the table and paying the mortgage? Di Caprio is outstanding, as is Winslet, she having to deal with an American accent along with the tearing emotions. I didn't see that anyone picked up on the final scene, of Kathy Bates and her husband, but to me that was the whole moral of the story - here is where you will end up if you give in to what you know is not right for you. Overall, though, well done - except women in the 50s did NOT wear hats to work!!

I saw an advance screening of Revolutionary Road in Beverly Hills, CA this evening (December 14th). A Q&A session followed the screening with Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon, Kathryn Hahn, and screenwriter Justin Haythe. Photos from the Q&A are attached to this report.

Revolutionary Road is a story that you won't be able to shake easily. The film will stick in your head and leave you to contemplate what has just happened on the screen before you. Richard Yates gives us the story of Frank and April Wheeler, the seemingly perfect suburbia couple. We soon find out their marriage is teetering on the edge of a collapse as they are overwhelmed by the fact that they have each made the wrong choices in their lives.

Once again Kate Winselt and Leonardo DiCaprio come together with great chemistry, pulling the best out of each other. This is a heavy film with emotionally complex characters, I'm not sure I could think of any two actors that could pull off the roles of Frank and April Wheeler like Leonardo and Kate did.

"Truth is usually in singular - Lies always come in plural." I'm not sure who said that, but it is a notion that sums up this film.

Michael Shannon shinned in his role as the clinically insane son of Kathy Bates character; John Givings. Bates and Shannon both deliver humorous scenes to this heavy storyline, although there are times when you see the sadness and desperation in their characters as well. Michael Shannon's character, John Givings, is the truth in this film. Although clinically insane, he can see through everyone's lies and does the unthinkable; he forces everyone face their own truth.

I guarantee you will not be singing "My Heart Will Go On" after seeing this film. But you won't be disappointed with this little film gem.

Leonard DiCaprio and Kate Winslet star in "Revolutionary Road," a 2008 film directed by Sam Mendes. The film also features Kathy Bates and John Givings.

It's 1955. Frank and April Wheeler have been married seven years, live in the Connecticut suburb and have two children. Frank works for a company that his father worked for, and he hates his job. April is a stay-at-home mom who wanted to be an actress.

While it might look good on the outside, this isn't the life either one envisioned. But April has an idea. They have enough money saved so that they can move to Paris, a city Frank loves. She can get a job as a secretary, which pays very well over there, and Frank can stay at home and decide what he really wants to do with his life. It sounds possible but maybe not practical, though Frank ultimately agrees to it.

Frank can't seem to find the right moment to give his notice; and then April discovers that she is pregnant. What now? There are lots of layers in this emotionally resonant, magnificently acted film. It's very much a story of its time for several reasons. The first is that it's obvious that April suffers from very bad depression. Though post-war psychological problems were recognized, actual depression, especially in a woman, probably wasn't given much attention. It was the returning soldiers who had suffered trauma who had the psychiatric focus. If by some means she had been discovered to have clinical depression, the medicine was horrible.

The second thing is that it was 1955. The ideas of picking up and moving to Europe with your family and the woman as breadwinner were outrageous back then. Now, not so much.

The third reason is that April at least had an artist's mentality and an artist's way of looking at the world. In this world, we have the practical and the artist, as in the O'Neill play Beyond the Horizon, where one brother is a farmer and the other brother is a poet who dreams of going out to sea. The problem is, there's no way to kill those attributes, and if you try, you won't be happy. April shouldn't have been married, shouldn't have been living in the suburbs, and shouldn't have stayed home.

Frank is more practical, though he'd like to be different, would like to do something he loves, if only he knew what that was. April thought he was cosmopolitan, adventurous, and that together, they'd be special. The idea that they're not special is something she can't tolerate.

This is such a fascinating movie about life's disappointments, punctuated with some humor by Kathy Bates as Mrs. Givings, a loquacious woman, whose son (Michael Shannon) has been institutionalized. When he meets the Wheelers, he has an uncanny way of speaking exactly the truth no one wants to hear. Shannon does a fantastic job in these disturbing scenes.

A shattering movie. I like to be entertained in films. I feel like we all have so much to reality to face, why not be able to turn away from it - but a beautifully realized film like this about dysfunction - somehow, I don't mind.

I went to see this at an advanced screener in Leicester Square last night. Kate Winslett chatted about the film on stage afterward. I went as one of those people who'd read the book and consider that source material to be amongst the best literature I'd ever read. I was wondering if and how the film could match up. My prior concerns were about how accurate the film would be. Well, there's nothing to worry about there. Mendes has created a near carbon copy of the book, the locations, characters and scenes are all exactly as I 'saw' them on the page. Nothing (as far as I could tell) is portrayed out of order, no extra characters are introduced, and no primary characters are dropped or altered. The acting is 100% perfect. The mies-en-scene is perfect. Absolutely nothing could or should have been done differently. So why not 10/10? The problem lies in the fact that Yates' novel is a literary one, much of the essence of the experience of the story is realized by Yates with just the right turn of phrase or choice of word. How does a director set about depicting or capturing this visually? I don't think he really can, he needs to use cinematic tricks and devices to inject resonance, the same resonance Yates achieves with that turn of phrase. But in being so (probably rightly) concerned about being true to the source material, the film somehow comes up a little flat as a film going experience, a sort of American Beauty without the crucial stylistic bells and whistles. Kate Winslett said afterward that (interestingly) it was she who had brought the book and the project to her husband, not vice versa and that it took some consideration for Sam Mendes to convince himself that he hadn't already told this story before, and by the final credits, I too was thinking just that, it felt like I'd watched a prequel to American Beauty, but without the pizazz and the rapture and the delight. So, the book, 10/10, the film, 8/10.

That 'Revolutionary Road' was directed by Sam Mendes (who directed the brilliant 'American Beauty' nine years earlier) and that it reunited two immensely talented actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet after 1997's 'Titanic' were reasons enough to see it.

'Revolutionary Road' may not be "revolutionary" and it is not perhaps a film that will be re-watched over and over by me. This said, there is so much to appreciate, there is no denying that it's incredibly well made and superbly acted. And to me and many others (though it is an understandably polarising film, the dark and unpleasant subject matter is not for everybody) it is a powerful and moving film, and one of the most realistic and truthful depictions of a struggling marriage on film.

Visually, 'Revolutionary Road' is wonderfully shot, bleak but also sumptuous, while the scenery and 50s production values are evocatively and handsomely rendered. Thomas Newman's music score is hauntingly hypnotic, achingly melancholic and at times ominous.

While at times stagy, the dialogue is insightful, making one really think about what it's saying (it has much to say and knows how to say it without preaching) and for many will wrench the gut and induce floods of tears. There is a little levity provided by Kathy Bates, that could have been ill-fitting but is pitched well. The story is deliberate, but the atmosphere is brilliantly evoked and there are many parts that have huge power and are emotionally devastating, especially in the latter parts.

Sam Mendes keeps things at an assured pace, keeps the atmosphere alive and doesn't undermine the chemistry between DiCaprio and Winslet in any way. DiCaprio and Winslet embody their roles, which are intentionally not the most likable, are very complex and very much compellingly real, and their chemistry is both tense and affecting. Winslet has the more complex one of the two and her performance is a heart-wrenching emotional roller-coaster, while DiCaprio gives an explosive turn especially in the fever pitch latter parts.

Michael Shannon proves himself to be a scene stealer as the brutally honest crazy nut, and Kathy Bates brings well-timed levity.

Overall, a powerful and moving film that is highly appreciated in many ways. 9/10 Bethany Cox