We Don't Live Here Anymore

Desperate housewives Edith (Watts) and Terry (Dern) deal with suburban boredom in two very different ways: Edith embarks on an affair with Terry's husband Jack (Ruffalo), while Terry hits the booze and lets her house degenerate into a pig sty. Meanwhile, Edith's husband Hank (Krause) is virtually oblivious to the infidelity under his nose: as a writer, he's far more interested in having his deepest personal thoughts revealed to strangers than he is in sharing them with his wife. Based on two short stories by Andre Dubus, We Don't Live Here Anymore is a well made and excellently acted film about pathetic, whinging, uninteresting people. It's difficult to work out why those having affairs don't take up golf or dominos instead; even in the throes of sex, these people fail to make any significant contact with one another. While the actors offer far more in the way of performances than the writing deserves, the characters remain ciphers. Men are scruffy, self-absorbed, uptight assholes, whereas the women are slightly tidier but emotionally incontinent assholes. Boasting the bleak, charmless settings and claustrophobic atmosphere beloved of American indie cinema, this film offers very few reasons why we should care about the people up on the screen. "Everyone deserves to be happy, right?" Terry demands at one point, and it's difficult to resist the insidious thought that even an American indie audience is entitled to a little happiness once in a while too.