We Don't Live Here Anymore movie review (2004)

Jack plays innocent, but fairly early in the film it's clear that both couples (and eventually their children) have a pretty good idea of what's going on. "We Don't Live Here Anymore" isn't about shocking discoveries and revelations, but about four people who move with varying degrees of eagerness toward, and then away from, the kinds of sexual cheating they may have read about in the pages of John Cheever, Philip Roth or John Updike -- whose characters are too sophisticated to be surprised by adultery, but not very good at it.

The movie, directed by John Curran and written by Larry Gross, is based on two stories by Andre Dubus. As with "In the Bedroom" (2001), also based on the work of Dubus, it listens carefully to what couples say in the privacy of their own long knowledge of themselves. What we hear this time is that Jack thinks Terry drinks too much, and Terry agrees. But Jack isn't cheating with Edith because his wife is a drunk; he's cheating because he wants to, because he and Edith have fallen into a season of lust. Hank, meanwhile, is not particularly alarmed by his cheating wife, because he's a serial cheater himself. His philosophy, explained to Jack: Sure, you should love your wife and kids, but it's OK to fool around sometimes "just because it feels good."

For Jack and Edith, it feels really good that first time, on the blanket in the woods near the bike trail. It feels so good that Jack has flashbacks to it every time he's near the place where it happened -- while taking his kids on a bike ride, for example. The movie presents those flashbacks with an odd undertone, as if they're bothering him. Is that because he regrets what he did, or regrets he isn't doing it again right now? Hard to say.

As for his wife, Terry, she tells Jack that she and Hank have had sex, and Jack's response is not the emotional reaction of a wounded man, but the intellectual combativeness of an English professor, who wants details of their conversations because he thinks somehow he can win this battle on a logical level. Hank, for that matter, also seems to prefer the theory to the practice of sex, although he confesses to Jack that he cried after breaking up with his last mistress.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46wnGacn6PBbrjIr5xmoJWnsm6tzbKkqKqVYn9xfJM%3D