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Watching as marriages, movie crumble

Two couples' sexual liaisons, devoid of passion and rife with recriminations, will have viewers wanting to get out of the vicinity of We Don't Live Here Anymore.

Movies about adultery should scare viewers into monogamy or make them wonder what thrills they're missing. John Curran's We Don't Live Here Anymore does neither, and apparently this bleak peek into two boring couples' extramarital circumstances never had any intention to do so.

This movie underlines the "dull" in adultery, focusing on four shallow, self-absorbed people who trade lives that aren't fun for others that are even less so. These mopes deserve each other, like the mating snakes in the recent Anaconda flick. None seem to have any warm feelings, past or present, for the others, or even for any children caught in the crossfire. Masturbation is the logical solution for them since, to paraphrase Woody Allen's old joke, it's sex with the only person they love.

Jack Linden (Mark Ruffalo) is a blocked writer teaching a skill he hasn't mastered at a small college. His wife, Terry (Laura Dern), is a stay-at-home mom whose lack of ambition for anything but drinking or shopping is a tell-tale sign that the movie is derived from outdated material. To hammer the point home, Edith Evans (Naomi Watts) does the same, while her husband, Hank (Peter Krause), coasts through his professorship and ogles coeds.

Bored with hating themselves, the foursome turns their destructive tendencies upon one another. Jack and Edith begin having an affair; nothing romantic, just mating in the woods. Hank seems to sense what's going on and may even be excited by it, if only because it gives him a chance to seduce Terry. And so it goes, pausing occasionally for heated recriminations and bald-faced lies.

The moaning and whining in We Don't Live Here Anymore sound the same, making both exertions pitiful. Not a single redeeming quality puts us in any corner of this non-romantic rectangle. Director Jack Curran and his actors don't have the courage to portray the sexual encounters as exciting, even temporarily. The faceoffs in which everyone wonders if they're doing the right things are, if you will, anticlimactic.

We Don't Live Here Anymore was obviously intended as an actor's dream yet feels more like a series of workshop exercises. There are brief moments, especially in Dern's performance, when some grain of truth emerges, but mostly it's sound and fury with no impact. Ruffalo's brand of detachment is ill-suited for this material. Krause's obvious satisfaction with himself - apparently bolstered by his good reviews for his role on HBO's Six Feet Under - falls in line with Hank's character, but interferes with his ability to convey anything deeper.

The women are placed in even worse positions. Watts is too young and talented to emulate Sharon Stone's frosty coasting through man-eating roles. Dern's stressed-out portrayal has one note, albeit a screeched one. We Don't Live Here Anymore might be a better movie if Terry and Edith stood their ground on occasion. Even rebellion against their spouses depends upon being used by each other's husbands. The sets, props and costumes look modern, but the drama is mired in darker ages.

Chances are the movie was produced only because two other movies inspired by the writings of Andre Dubus - In the Bedroom and House of Sand and Fog - found critical favor. The fact that two of the author's short stories were required to create such a listless, pointless film proves that Dubus, who died in 1999, wasn't a bottomless wellspring of ideas. The first two movies hinged upon somebody being murdered, and only the possibility that the same can happen in this one keeps us interested until the fadeout, when we're disappointed again.

Grade: D

Director: John Curran

Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Peter Krause

Screenplay: Larry Gross, based on the short stories We Don't Live Here Anymore and Adultery by Andre Dubus

Rating: R; sexual situations, strong profanity, mature themes of adultery

Running time: 101 min.