Jack and Terry.  Hank and Edith.  They’re married couples and best friends with much in common.  Jack and Hank are professors at Cedar County College.  Terry and Edith are stay-at-home moms.  And Jack and Edith are secret lovers.  Based on stories by Andre Dubus (In the Bedroom), this exploration of marriages on the edge won the 2004 Sundance Film Festival’s top screenwriting award.

Edith (Naomi Watts) is in love with Jack (Mark Ruffalo).  Jack lusts for Edith but is married to Terry (Laura Dern).  Terry loves Jack but gets little in return.  Edith is married to Hank (Peter Krause), who hardly seems capable of loving anyone.  The stage is set for compelling drama, for compelling verbal exchanges a la Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe or Bad Manners.  Unfortunately, the film falls flat, never rising above the morass of the characters.  Early on, after their first tryst (shown in flashback), Edith says to jack, “How do you think we’ll get caught?”  She says it so blandly that one would think she almost wants to be found out.  The line also sets a tone for the film: everything that follows is a foregone conclusion.

Jack and Hank are professors at a local college.  This is important because it informs how they handle, or don’t handle, the conflicts that arise.  Jack is cold and intellectual.  When he discovers that Terry has cheated on him, he demands to know every last detail, as though he can win the argument on some logical basis.  Hank is so immersed in his work that he hardly notices anything that goes on around him.  He is a serial cheater who does it “just because it feels good,” and assumes that his wife is probably doing the same thing.  No one in this foursome is particularly good at infidelity, and the who cares attitude leaves everything feeling anticlimactic. 

The acting in this film is solid all around, and that may be part of the problem.  The actors are better than what they have to work with.  The lives of these characters are such a mess, and the film wallows in it, never delving too deeply or rising above it.  Things just meander along to their vague, blasé conclusion.  One has to believe that the source material, by In the Bedroom writer Andre Dubus, shed more light onto the characters than the film has.  We Don’t Live Here Anymore is much in the same vein as In the Bedroom, but it is nowhere near as affecting, as penetrating as that film.  There is no real arc to the characters, to the story.  Things just are what they are, and what they are is only interesting for so long.  We keep waiting for something to happen, some change, some revelation, something that never happens.  These people whine constantly, but they seem at the same time content to stay where they are.  It is difficult to illicit empathy for any of them.

As serious adult dramas go, We Don’t Live Here Anymore could be worse, but it could also be a lot better.  There is potential in the material that is never fully realized.  The actors are what make the film, but they haven’t been given much to work with.

We Don’t Live Here Anymore is presented in the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  The transfer is crisp, and the colors come through sharply.  From the drab interiors to the vibrant Pacific Northwest exteriors, the picture quality is superb.

This DVD is presented in 5.1 Dolby Surround, with tracks in English and French.  This is not a big sound effects kind of film, but the presentation is solid.

Just the theatrical trailer.

The trailer is engaging, but that is the only piece of bonus material on the disc.  It would be nice to have a commentary, especially considering how Watts and Ruffalo doubled as producers, or a behind-the-scenes featurette.