Small-town dreams and disillusionment

Devastating in its analysis of a marriage based on no more than mild romantic fantasies, "Revolutionary Road" is a threat to just about everyone. If you are married, it might be best to see it separately. If you are thinking of marrying, you might run from the theater in disillusioned panic.

Set in the 1950s, just before the beatniks or other kinds of rebellion were set to shake things up, it concerns the Wheelers, April and Frank. They live on the titular Revolutionary Road in suburban Connecticut. They live in a nice house with nice furniture. He has a nice job in the city in which he is bored and does no more than he needs to get by. She does housework and cares for their two children. They have a martini at night. They smoke cigarettes constantly, as does everyone else. It's all very nice.

They are miserable.

Perhaps the refreshing thing about April and Frank is that they are not melodramatic, tragic characters because they never had any big dreams in the first place. They thought romance or "luv" or whatever you want to call the racing hormones of youth would be enough to sustain a marriage. They are just getting to the point in life where they suspect there should be more. They might even dream. They might even have a fantasy. Maybe, even, before they settle into middle age.

Unlike Martha and George - in the more excitingly combative "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" - they are more disillusioned than panicked. She suggests he give up the job and move to Paris, where she will support him via a job as a translator at the American Embassy. This will give him a chance, presumably, to "find himself." She seems remarkably generous, but soon we learn she wants escape more than he.

He loses interest in Paris when he gets a raise at the office. He's excited about it for no apparent reason. He'll be just as bored as ever, only he'll be paid a little more.

All this is based on a famous 1961 novel by Richard Yates, whom someone once called "the voice of the postwar Age of Anxiety."

The stars are Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, the lovers from "Titanic" (1997), now facing more troublesome problems than a mere iceberg. They both are excellent. DiCaprio was a fine child actor - notably great in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" (1993) - but his baby face has kept getting in the way of him growing into adult roles. In spite of miscasting, he eventually convinced us that he did, indeed, suggest Howard Hughes in "The Aviator" (2004).

But, for the first time, here he actually seems grown up enough to both understand and experience the bored inertia he is asked to play. He is "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" from a similar, but tame, novel of its era.

For Leo to escape from his baby-faced trap seems more exciting than seeing Winslet yet again play the kind of suburban, sex-starved woman she portrayed equally well in "Little Children" (2006). She is the one, though, who is winning all the awards - Golden Globes for both this role and "The Reader," which is in other local theaters. She is sure to be Oscar-nominated Thursday for both roles. She is deserving, but some of us have trouble getting excited about her.

She is directed by her husband, London theater director Sam Mendes, who directed the Oscar-winning "American Beauty" (1999), another film that dissected life in small-town America.

The always-dependable Kathy Bates plays the nice real estate lady who comes by occasionally to talk about nothing. She plays this boring woman in a way that suggests comedic relief but never gets funny about it. She's a refreshing respite from the battling Wheelers.

The other supporting performance is a knockout that should, if there is any justice, be nominated in the supporting-actor category. It is Michael Shannon as Bates' weirdo son, John. He's been in a mental institution, and Bates thinks it will help him to come over and visit a nice, "normal" family like the Wheelers. When he gets there, we learn that he is the sanest one around. The only problem is that he tells the truth. As Mae West used to say, "I know you're telling the truth, but you're telling too much of it."

John holds up a mirror to the Wheelers that mocks their delusions.

This is fine drama, wonderfully acted.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com