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BY MAGGIE SCOTT
Director Sam Mendes offers a chilly portrait of a disintegrating marriage and its tormented young partners in “Revolutionary Road,” a lacerating adaptation (Justin Haythe) of the Richard Yates’ novel.

Skillfully laying out the landscape of this landmine-filled relationship from the film’s first moment: Haythe has economically sketched wife April (Kate Winslet) and husband Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) as captives to the American Dream who lost themselves and their authentic dreams along the way to a “perky” house in the Connecticut suburbs, two sweet kids and a solid job.

She wanted to be an actress. He wanted to “feel things…really feel them.” She used to think, “You’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.” He used to think, “I hope I don’t end up like you,” about a father who worked for the same Knox Business Machines company Frank takes a train into Manhattan to every day to occupy a cubicle on the 15th floor.

There’s housework for her and two martini lunches and quickies with the cutie in the secretarial pool for him. Did she really want the children they have? Is he really interested in being part of the sales team that will bring new-fangled personal computers to the public?

Frank is desperate. April is desperate. Can a new life in Paris renew their love and restore their lives to authentic purpose?

At first, they are giddy with hope. But, soon doubts creep into Frank’s mind as neighbors and co-workers question the reality of the plan April devised and the manhood of a person who would be “picking his nose while his wife works.”

Does this plan rescue Frank or rescue April? If they can’t be happy right where they are, is their relationship not just empty, but hopeless? Alternating between rage and despair, April will take drastic actions to ensure that Frank’s betrayal of himself and the missing of their “one chance” do not completely and finally annihilate her.

Winslet and DiCaprio are relentlessly superb as they deliver lacerating performances of characters not just of their time (1955), but relevant to any time and place where expectations, obligations and fear create insubstantial and fraudulent facades.

Amid the bleak pleasantries there is a searing performance by Michael Shannon as a furloughed mental patient who sees right through the Wheelers’ sham marriage. He steals the show.

A DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage release, rated R for language, some sexual content, brief nudity.

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