English professor Jack (Ruffalo) is married to slobby Terry (Dern) and carruying on with his friend's foxy wife Edith (Watts). Edith's husband, failed novelist Hank (Krause), is carrying on with Terry and, apparently, half of New England. It's a right old carry on.This one's been sold as a "provocative drama", but it's really just a souped-up soap opera with pretensions to artistic importance. There are few searing insights here, save for an aside to the kids that "Grown ups fight - especially married ones".Clunking symbolism abounds; from a tangled, primordial forest surrounding the college campus in which Jack and Edith play Adam and Eve ("Easy, sailor!" gasps Watts' Edith hilariously, while she's penetrated against a tree), to animal-themed wallpaper and Watts' hushed revelation that we're all little more than "gorillas in a zoo licking it off our hands". Tell, don't show, is their watchword.In mitigation, the ensemble cast are mostly sound, given the limitations of their material. Ruffalo's the model of a prematurely-induced mid-life crisis; whether deliberately picking fights to hasten a relationship's demise (a process applied with precisely the opposite aim in Edward Albee's sharper 1966 film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), or taking perverse delight in the ins-and-outs of Terry's adulterous tit-for-tat tryst, thus assuaging his own guilt.Dern's wronged housewife is a sight to behold, if not exactly savour, her face contorted almost beyond recognition into a mask of pain. Krause, too, impresses in his first major screen role as a self-absorbed pleasure-seeker and deliverer of platitudes who breezily informs Jack to "love all the people you can", utterly oblivious to the hurt he leaves behind.Yet these are all characters in search of a decent screenplay. "Looks like it's going to snow", murmurs Dern toward the maddeningly ambivalent climax, and it's typical of the script, and of its delivery, that you can practically see the actors sight reading off their portentous autocues.

Amazing and disturbing. That's what I thought when the credit for this film began to roll. I wanted to go back and see certain scenes again. I wanted to listen to the dialogues again. I did. I wanted to clap for all the four main leads for making the whole story so real. And my feeling after the movie ended said it all. I just sat there marveling at the manner in which the film tackles the issue of adultery head-on. I have not read the short stories on which this film is based and I don't know if I want to read them now. I think this movie has conveyed enough. The first scene - 2 men, 2 women. A get-together. Which are the couples? Hmmm..Not Sure. (This could be a spoiler) 2nd Scene - Yes! There it is, I thought. Now that we are already into it what is remaining to be shown? This is: The confrontation, the revenge, the escaping (metaphorically - from the failure of the respective marriages), the justification and finally facing the consequences and hence defining the road for the future. All this makes the movie. The ending is beautiful and and apt. The dialogues are the backbone of this film. When all the four characters know what is going on (this is a spoiler) how can they deal or come through the whole situation? Through communication of course - verbal and non-verbal. And what the characters speak or show so painfully conveys what is going on inside them. And yes - children do understand if parents are happy with each other or not. At times silent witnesses; at times trying to bring them together in their own little ways. The music and the settings (houses and outdoors) are well chosen to convey the moods of the characters. The editing is such that the scenes actually tell us what thoughts flow into and from the minds of the four leads. It's a lovely movie all in all - a small indie film that should not be missed by any hardcore movie lover.

totally awesome film...i think everybody should watch it, it's so realistic...you can feel the chemistry between the four of them!!! dern as devoted yet fragile housewife matched by rufallo uncertainty, while watts as the seductive one just so excellent with capital E and matched by krauss vulnerability. it's just like an ordinary daily live when you watch it that just don't feel like watching movie...maybe the reality could be compared to "a home at the end of the world" truly it's so rare to find a film with all the right chemistry and a reality that's so true...my advice is you should watch this movie at whatever cost...you won't regret a thing

Four great actors are hampered by a script that heads towards hell but leads nowhere. Jack and Terry (Ruffalo and Dern) and Hank and Edith (Krause and Watts) are two estranged marriages. Jack and Hank are both struggling writers teaching at the local university. Terry is the ignored mother and Edith is the unappreciated youthful spouse. Jack and Edith begin a steamy affair, and Terry and Hank suspect. Hank, always a bit on edge, contemplating the worse, acts on his anger or competitiveness and Terry succumbs, half out of contempt and half as a way to dull the misery. The movie succeeds when it blends the mixed emotions of hurt and anger and love and lust and desire and bitterness. It lags when it tries to put too much meaning and dialog behind actions and emotions and moments that speak for themselves.