Revolutionary Road

People who give up on their dreams for security reasons are resigned to comfortable, empty lives. It's what starts getting under the skin of Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April Wheeler (Kate Winslet). The couple met at a party, where they fancied each other as the most interesting people in the room. Now it's 1955, they're married with kids, and Frank's making it happen with a job he hates. As domestic drama, Revolutionary Road is technically superb. The film has a pastel delicacy. It's the material that's problematic---harder to take seriously the more seriously it takes itself. When the Wheelers first see their home, it's presented as a beautiful death trap. The suburb-phobia isn't as annoyingly prominent as it could have been, but it's also key to the film's overblown negativity. Frank and April are unhappy, but moving to Paris to figure things out is considered a bad pipe dream. As Frank and April revert further into their own needs, they lose sympathetic connection with the audience. Revolutionary Road becomes the prime victim of its hopelessness. Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe deliver one great character---a comedically rude neighbourhood truth-teller, played by Michael Shannon. But there comes a point where one starts puzzling over why everyone's acting so hysterically.