Film

Kate and Leo are finally back together again—and yes, the ship is sinking. Revolutionary Road, from Richard Yates’s impressively modern 1961 novel, is about a marriage taking water. And for a moment, it looks as if both passengers are going to have the romantic fortitude to go below decks and start bailing. Failed actor April (Winslet) hates the suburban Connecticut life she shares with her corporate copywriter husband, Frank (DiCaprio)—also in a rut of his own, made of easy jokes at the office, clogged ashtrays and listless cheating with an available secretary. (The movie keeps Yates’s 1950s setting but rarely functions as period nostalgia, to its credit.) April suggests a radical move, to Paris and a rekindled shared purpose. He accepts, but life gets in the way.

We’ve seen Winslet pinned behind these window panes before, trembling. Here, though, her material is meatier, more about aging and the death of dreams, and she is spellbinding, particularly as she closes down. DiCaprio launches himself into terrific Nicholsonian rages with Winslet; they both seem secure as performers, and it’s tempting to think of this as the Titanic generation’s graduation.

The movie is occasionally prestigey (it’s time to put composer Thomas Newman out to pasture), but no film featuring Bug’s ferocious Shannon, as a neighbor’s mentally disturbed son who has weird insights, could be confused for mere Oscar fare.