We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004)

What a waste of my time!!!

Powerful

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

I was not repulsed by Laura Dern's clear case of anorexia.I wanted to punch her in her face. Her husband probably can not stand to look at her and the marriage is failing because who can respect a shrew like her. The scene where she is having sex with him is disgusting - all bones are showing and the sinewy muscles creep me out.It is very distracting to watch a movie when an actor's glaring personal problem overshadows all else. I spent most of the movie imagining her own personal self-loathing which has driven her to this place. Successful family and career, but something else below the surface. Directors should realize that it does not help a movie when they employ actors with problems. I would have made her eat each day in front of me before I began filming. I stopped watching her cable show for the same reason. I wish she gets helps.This is not a bashing post, but I am truly tired of watching movies and seeing this issue.So many people in the world who can't get 3 squares a day...what a lucky society we live in...all hail the pursuit of size zero.

English professor Jack (Ruffalo) is married to slobby Terry (Dern) and carruying on with his friend's foxy wife Edith (Watts). Edith's husband, failed novelist Hank (Krause), is carrying on with Terry and, apparently, half of New England. It's a right old carry on.This one's been sold as a "provocative drama", but it's really just a souped-up soap opera with pretensions to artistic importance. There are few searing insights here, save for an aside to the kids that "Grown ups fight - especially married ones".Clunking symbolism abounds; from a tangled, primordial forest surrounding the college campus in which Jack and Edith play Adam and Eve ("Easy, sailor!" gasps Watts' Edith hilariously, while she's penetrated against a tree), to animal-themed wallpaper and Watts' hushed revelation that we're all little more than "gorillas in a zoo licking it off our hands". Tell, don't show, is their watchword.In mitigation, the ensemble cast are mostly sound, given the limitations of their material. Ruffalo's the model of a prematurely-induced mid-life crisis; whether deliberately picking fights to hasten a relationship's demise (a process applied with precisely the opposite aim in Edward Albee's sharper 1966 film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), or taking perverse delight in the ins-and-outs of Terry's adulterous tit-for-tat tryst, thus assuaging his own guilt.Dern's wronged housewife is a sight to behold, if not exactly savour, her face contorted almost beyond recognition into a mask of pain. Krause, too, impresses in his first major screen role as a self-absorbed pleasure-seeker and deliverer of platitudes who breezily informs Jack to "love all the people you can", utterly oblivious to the hurt he leaves behind.Yet these are all characters in search of a decent screenplay. "Looks like it's going to snow", murmurs Dern toward the maddeningly ambivalent climax, and it's typical of the script, and of its delivery, that you can practically see the actors sight reading off their portentous autocues.

John Curran presents a very unsettling view on fragile relationships. At the centre of the story there are two married couples and from their interactions one can easily conclude that there was once a lot of love within the couples and a strong friendship between them and now, well in the case of Hank and Edith, the love is vanishing into thin air. Edith still yearns for Hank's love but Hank is too self-absorbed in his self-perceived failure and careless about his wife's infidelity. Terry still deeply loves Jack who is going through a mid-life crisis (like Hank) and finds comfort, both sexual and emotional, with Edith. At the center of their relationships are the children of the respective couples who are the most vulnerable ones. The film is a shocking portrayal of relationships and friendships that have reached a stage where indifference, obligation, guilt, loneliness and despair take over. Curran also adds some doses of humour that is subtle and welcoming (at the same time non-intrusive).The cinematography is fantastic and editing is wonderful. I especially liked how the camera jumps from one character to another, showing what they are going through, during a constant time period. The score contributes to the gloominess but in a non-intrusive and non-melodramatic way. It is rather gentle and flowing smoothly.'We Don't Live Here Anymore' showcases four exceptional performances. Ruffalo is both hateful and sympathetic as Jack. The remarkable Laura Dern is explosive and fiery as Terry. Her Terry is the strongest of the four and Dern is both gripping and haunting. Both Ruffalo and Dern benefit from well-defined roles (but even otherwise they are great actors as has been evident in their other movies) though there was the risk that had the roles been played by lesser actors, they could have easily become caricatures. However, the characters Hank and Edith depend more on the actor's performances. Naomi Watts shows immense depth through a wonderfully restrained performance while Peter Krause brilliantly downplays and brings a rawness to his part and his facial expressions speak volumes.'We Don't Live Here Anymore' is certainly not a positive look at relationships. The friendship between the couple is strong and there is an understanding between them that shows that they care for each other. Notice in the later scene when Dern's Terry tries to comfort Watts's Edith and the chats between Hank and Jack are proof enough. Even though the words aren't said, they only know each other too well and maybe it is respect that is losing its hold and probably friendship will too. Curran's film tells a meaningful raw story that is honest, brutal, daring and unsympathetic to its characters.

A whole bunch of talent is wasted in this dismal film that wanders all over the place but goes nowhere.Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts, Laura Dern....come on! If you've got a star roster like that and can't come up with anything better than this film, your right to make movies should be revoked. This is one of those films about a bunch of late-thirty-somethings who have too much time on their hands and spend all of it whining about how miserable they are. The problem is that none of them are likable, and we're not given any reason to care about any of them, so it's much like going to a party full of a bunch of people you don't know and will never see again, complaining about lives you know nothing about and will never need to. If I found myself at a party like that, I'd want to leave and go get ice cream or something, which is what I wanted to do while watching this movie.Grade: F