by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
A Rated R 130 min
This is writer/director Todd Field’s droll adaptation of Albert Berger’s novel. Field’s scenario delves into the boring lives of suburban housewives who meet at a playground and gossip about a house husbands they call Prom King. His name is Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson) and he brings his child to play. He is a lawyer but he failed the bar exam and is not too enthusiastic about taking it again.
Kate Winslet deftly portrays Sarah Pierce, who is appalled by the other women’s catty comments. After hearing quite enough of their trivial ruminations about the Prom King, she decides to play a prank on them by making friends with the handsome stranger and giving them something really scandalous to yap about.
Field uses a well known documentary narrator, Will Lyman, adding another quirky dimension to the first part of the film. At first the narration is distracting, but it quickly melds with the biting satirical overview of Field’s cleverly written script. This neighborhood could be Payton Place 2.0.
The playground clique is also buzzing about the return of a neighborhood pedophile until Brad enters their world with his kid. Sarah launches her plan to put-on the women by flirting with Brad, and telling him of her prank. They kiss to shock the women, but it was more than a faux kiss, and they realize they are sexually attracted to each other. One thing leads to another, and Sarah and Brad gradually build the sexual tension to an explosive point and they end up having a torrid affair.
Sarah has a master’s degree in English Literature and she is dissatisfied with her life as a suburban housewife married to a successful entrepreneur (Gregg Edlman) who likes having sex with himself while watching a porn website more than with her. Brad is married to a PBS documentary filmmaker Kathy (Jennifer Connelly). She is pressuring Brad to study for his bar exam, but he’d rather watch football. However, he uses going to the library to study as an excuse to get out of the house to meet Sarah for their frequent trysts. Brad uses any excuse not to study for his exam because deep down he doesn’t want to be a lawyer. He lives vicariously by watching teenage boys skateboarding in the park. They symbolize his lost youth.
Field interprets Berger’s novel as a dissertation on how thirty-somethings have a difficult time making the transition from the freedom of their youth to the maturity of being married with children. Ah yes, all the lost dreams and misspent youth come to the surface with the demands of being a husband and father. Brad realizes he is trapped in suburban hell with financial obligations and a pushy wife and parents who pressured him to get his law degree. Now he has failed the bar exam twice and can only take it one more time. His affair with Sarah has given him renewed vigor and hope that he can escape his self-imposed middle-class prison. In this respect, Brad has rationalized his guilt at giving into his passions and revisiting his youth.
The fearful specter of the pedophile is played out in the public swimming pool near where Sarah and Brad are basking in the sun. The creepy looking neighborhood child molester goes swimming with fins and a snorkel ogling the kids underwater. The parents go ballistic and the man is ushered out of the area by the police.
Field’s screenplay takes a dark look at the numbing reality of domesticity–the day to-day monotony of dealing with kids and then trying to keep a modicum of romance alive in the marriage. In this respect, Field’s’ film is teasingly condoning the happy affair which breaks up the tedium of suburban life. Ah yes, but there is a price to pay, and it takes a long time to play out. After a while, even Bard and Sarah’s affair becomes almost mundane. It’s as if, once one enters the hellish nightmare of the suburban living, extramarital affairs become tainted with the stink of suburban mediocrity.
Sarah is conflicted and still chasing her younger dreams. At this point, life with Brad has been a diversion. But what about tomorrow, or in ten years? It’s a familiar dilemma for men and women in their thirties trying to bring the excitement of youth back into the crushing routine of maturity. How Sarah and Brad work out this conundrum is the hook of the premise.
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