Double Cross
Watchable group study We Don't Live Here Anymore details spousal trade-offs between two unhappy adulterous couples
Four attractive adults dance and drink, flirt and chat; meaningful, perhaps conspiratorial glances are exchanged. As many critics have noted, it's difficult to identify the married couples in the initial moments of We Don't Live Here Anymore—largely because the underlying relationships are already so badly damaged. In effect, the film is a prolonged denouement; there is no emotional catharsis, no dramatic arc. The same situations and confrontations unfold again and again with an almost predictable rhythm. Even the crisscross affairs that drive the film's narrative seem more a symptom of the marital wreckage than some new beginning. Anymore builds to a climax of sorts, but there's little reason to believe the couples won't revert to conditioned patterns soon after the closing credits.
Despite its sometimes unforgiving formal rigor, the film's group study remains watchable, even compelling thanks in large part to its strong cast. Peter Krause's Hank Evans is a smug, seemingly self-assured professor and would-be author whose laissez-faire attitude toward relationships barely masks a core emptiness. Already emotionally detached from the marriage, his wife Edith, played by Naomi Watts, merely awaits a triggering event to jar her from her limbo-like existence. Hank's closest friend and colleague, Jack Linden, is a passive-aggressive bully, projecting his guilt and self-doubt on his uncomprehending family; it's a testament to Mark Ruffalo's considerable talent that Jack's very real inner turmoil registers despite his unconscionable behavior. In a bravely unguarded performance, Laura Dern plays Jack's wife, Terry, as his emotional opposite, an exposed nerve subject to wild mood swings, drunken harangues and frightening manic episodes.
The four exist in a seemingly closed universe, their collective narcissism manifested in limited social interaction. In the film's relational Skinner box, Hank and Jack's jogging outings double as a competitive proving ground. In a sense, the latter's affair with Edith is a sublimated act of vengeance against his friend—for his material comfort, perceived professional success and relatively stable spouse. Similarly, Edith harbors an unspoken jealousy of Terry's emotional bond, however tenuous, with her husband. The ensuing, halfhearted tryst between Hank and Terry, effectively engineered by their spouses, progresses more like a mathematical proof than an expression of actual desire. Trapped in this constrictive environment, the couples' children act as silent witnesses, more attuned to the surrounding reality than their self-absorbed elders.
Though Anymore bears a familial resemblance to Neil LaBute's mean-spirited Your Friends and Neighbors, director John Curran's touch is lighter, less judgmental. The opening sequence has a lilting, almost dreamlike tone that resurfaces at odd points throughout the narrative. Unmotivated cutaways to other characters drift through ongoing scenes, imparting a lyrical quality that nonetheless reinforces the film's claustrophobic tableau. Even the couples' respective living spaces function as reflections of their inner states; the Evans home is cool, ordered and antiseptic, while the Lindens' household is a study in chaos. Curran's only missteps are the repeated visual and aural cues portending physical calamity. Though the audience may crave some sort of dramatic crescendo, at its most honest, the film registers as one long, dull ache. It opens at Green Hills Friday.
—Scott Manzler
