Revolutionary Road (2008) DVD

Adaptation is a tricky business, though there’s no dissuading Sam Mendes, who follows Road to Perdition and Jarhead with this attempt to bring Richard Yates’ novel of the same name to the cinema. The novel picked away at the serenity of the 1950s suburbs on its publication in 1962, and Mendes revels in the period detail, lovingly placing shiny trinkets of the American dream onto the screen. From the clapperboard homes, each with a freshly waxed Cadillac on the driveway, to the suited and booted residents and their manicured, sprinkler-watered lawns.

While Howdy Doody plays on the television, however, something rotten lies at the heart of Revolutionary Road, Connecticut. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio play April and Frank, fed up with work, the ’burbs and each other. They spend their days apart, lusting after neighbours and secretaries, while their nights are spent together hiding these sordid affairs in a fug of smoke and drink.

All of this makes for a fine premise for a movie, but is undone here by dull direction and a lack of chemistry between the lead actors. Winslet is comically theatrical, tripping over her accent whenever she raises her voice, while DiCaprio is miscast as the lackadaisical Jack, unbelievable and entirely unlikeable, even when attempting charm. When one of the pair transgress, the music dutifully switches to jazz while Mendes frantically scans the screen for something reflective – a mirror, some polished steel or a window ham-fistedly forced into shot in an attempt to articulate deception. With no such surfaces to hand, the camera is sulkily locked onto the tripod as the actors are wedged into a door frame. This clumsy visual exposition is inexplicable from such an accomplished director.

The result is absurd, with the hopeless and inevitable tragedy of the story – the complexities of life, love and family and more specific questions of the expectations thrown up by the unique position of American society in the boom years – reduced to mere melodrama, a ridiculous soap opera riddled with cliché.

Kingsley Marshall