We Don't Live Here Anymore Review

by David N. Butterworth (dnb AT dca DOT net)
September 7th, 2004
WE DON'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2004 David N. Butterworth

**1/2 (out of ****)

    "We Don't Live Here Anymore," the sophomore effort by director John Curran ("Praise"), is sad, depressing stuff, an incredibly honest depiction of two unhappily married couples who seek comfort in each others spouses and wind up tearing each other apart. It's sort of like a Neil LaBute slugfest in which both genders wind up in the Vegematic. Jake (Mark Ruffalo) and Hank (Peter Krause) are best buds, professors at a New England college where Jack teaches literature and Hank creative writing. They like to run together and they like to sleep with each other's wives. Jack's wife Terry (Laura Dern) is a mess, as is their house. Their two kids often hear the two of them going at it late at night (fighting, or "adult foolishness"). Terry drinks too much and perhaps because of it Jack loves Hank's wife Edith (Naomi Watts), or at least has sex with her, because she's everything Terry isn't. And Edith in turn loves, or at least has sex with, Jack because he's everything her husband, a blocked writer who's openly flirtatious with his female students, isn't. Strange as it may seem Terry and Edith are also close friends. What's different about the film is that all this information is kept very close to the surface, with each character openly suspicious of the others, all feeling the urge, the need, to tell all. These are real, imperfect people: the men who believe extramarital sex to mean everything (escape; redemption) and the women who are uniquely able to forgive these indiscretions (retention; strength). The film is based on the short stories "We Don't Live Here Anymore" and "Adultery" by Andre Dubus.

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David N. Butterworth
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