At a late-1940s party among the Manhattan intelligentsia, two bright young scene-makers catch each other's eye across the crowded room. April (Kate Winslet) is an aspiring actress seductive in her little black dress, and handsome Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) aspires to escape the constraints of middle-class boredom. They marry. When childbirth interrupts their bohemian dream, he is drawn into the white-collar ranks to support his new family and she is forced to tend house, a dull saltbox on a sleepy street whose incongruous name is a call to insurrection.
In Revolutionary Road, director Sam Mendes returns to the theme of suburban disillusion he worked more memorably in American Beauty. Convinced for no apparent reason that they are special, April and Frank grow resentful as they surrender their ill-defined values to the shallow materialism of Eisenhower's America. An unhappy marriage is hidden from the neighbors behind the immaculately kept facade of prosperity.
Revolutionary Roadincludes marvelous moments of acting when DiCaprio and Winslet channel the Method angst of their '50s Hollywood predecessors, and several good scenes, especially Frank's weary trudge from the train to his New York office in a gray flannel suit with a briefcase heavier than any ball and chain. And yet something is missing from Mendes' adaptation of Richard Yates' novel. April and Frank's adherence to the cult of "feeling alive" in a society of passionless phonies seldom feels visceral. Mendes seems to handle his material with the sort of white gloves April wears when going to the market.
