Like a latter day "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" meets "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" the current take on infidelity and marriage is rocky at best in this adaptation of Andre Dubus' short stories (he's best known for the novel "In The Bedroom" which was released to some fine acclaim a few years ago. However the translation feels at best staid, and a bit indifferent, but then again in all fairness I have not read the material it is based and can only say that it is exceptionally acted with its moments of classic 1970s fare like "Carnal Knowledge" and the aforementioned Edward Albee tale.

Starring Ruffalo and Dern as Jack and Terry Linden and Krause and Naomi as Hank and Edith Evans - two married couples with children and apparently the best of friends (the men work as English professors at the same unnamed decidedly New England college with literary aspirations - at least for Hank whose toil at a novel results in his act of defiance in burning the only copy in frustration on the family Hibachi.

It seems Jack and Edith have been having an affair with no qualms about being caught by their careless spouses - Hank is a disloyal husband and skirt-chaser including his nubile co-eds (a real cliché) and head case Terry is convinced that her life is a complete loss and failure as a homemaker - as they have secret rendezvous while doing daily chores or pretending to work away from the home.  Jack married Terry to make her happy (she was pregnant with the first of their two small children) and Edith knows how sad she is in not being touched with love by Hank who baldly lies to her face as if he were placing a lunch order in a deli (all by rote and bloodless).

Eventually the drama at hand comes to a head when the Lindens bicker into the wee hours and the Evanses simply do not communicate at all except that oddly enough both couples dearly adore their children and dote on them (except for one memorable lapse of laziness by Terry.

All four principals are exceedingly gaining popularity for their effortless acting - Krause having a cottage industry as sad-sack introverts who can't feel (he's the best thing on HBO's acclaimed "Six Feet Under"); Ruffalo continues to be a combination of Montgomery Clift angst and breezy ease a la Brando; Dern - the byproduct of legendary character actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd - clearly has inherited their above-average chromosomes delivers her best performance in many years; and Watts' streak of indefatigable chameleon-like workman roles is making her fine character actress disguised in movie-star clothing ; all are the real thing.

The dialogue however feels very theatrical and at times awkward (in fact at one point Ruffalo's Jack is marking a paper and writes in red pencil that exact word with three !!!) There is one third act sequence of genuine dread and foreboding as to what to expect but the sum of its parts makes it, a just miss in reviving the sins of the married to full hilt.