Adultery is a touchy theme. Audiences typically seek an escape from reality through cinema, living vicariously through their silver screen lovers and heroes. A film centered on deceit and disillusionment might not be desirable entertainment for most. However, the combination of acting, writing and ultimate uplift in We Don’t Live Here Anymore elevates it from depressing adultery melee to insightful lesson-bearing art film.
The movie opens with a dinner party hosted by Jack Linden, a bearded and passive Mark Ruffalo (You Can Count on Me), and his wife Terry, a thin and frazzled Laura Dern (Citizen Ruth). Their best friends, Hank Evans, a college English professor played by Peter Krause (Six Feet Under), and wife Edith, an icy, blonde Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive), attend. The foursome proceeds to get drunk, and the evening culminates with a screaming fight between Terry and Jack. The relationships between the two couples are tired, lacking the communication needed for a healthy marriage. Both have moved beyond the honeymoon period into their ten-year lag. Jack and Terry’s arguments begin when Terry repeatedly accuses Jack of distancing himself from her and cheating on her. Hank and Edith have the opposite problem, lacking any confrontation, leaving Hank solely occupied with writing and Edith feeling alone. Sad and passionless most of the time, Edith breaks out of this rut when she is in Jack’s arms living out the fantasy of a secret affair. Edith revels in the suspense of getting caught by her husband, until she realizes that he knows and does not care that they are together. Jack and Edith’s supposed secret rendezvous’ evolve from being a passionate escape to a habitual trap, creating more problems than they relieve.
Cinematographer Maryse Alberti creates a soft and beautiful setting for the characters’ infidelities, which adds another dimension to the mix. In this world, where the late afternoon sun pours through the leaves on trees, and greens and golds mix with the colors of human flesh, things are not as they seem. All is not well, and all are not happy. What we see behind the multi-million dollar walls in this picture perfect neighborhood, complete with sidewalks and street lamps, is the soiled ideal of family life. Shots pristinely arranged with warm light and carefully constructed shadows convince us that material beauty, wealth, status, mean nothing when it comes to being happy.
Jack and Edith’s few moments of guilty pleasure stem from the repeated motif of a stream- crossing bridge in a lush New England forest. The image of vines over the bridge recalls Jack’s fleeting moment of pleasure making love to Edith against a tree. When Jack crosses this bridge through the film, he flashes back to the scene. This union, which they mistake as love, is in fact their happy escape from their spouses and concrete lives.
A cello score by Michael Convertino reinforces the dichotomy between the two families, swelling in and out with the emotional ups and downs of the characters. The morning routine of the Evans’ and Lindens’ follows the music, beginning with a flowing, tranquil melody to echo the calm, clean and quiet of the Evans’ home. The music leaps to a choppy, a-harmonic cello rhythm each time the scene cuts to the Linden home, where Terry is cleaning the kitchen from the past night’s debauchery as their rowdy children fight over food. The tension between Jack and Terry, and the passivity between Hank and Edith in this morning scene is evident. Angular, balanced camera angles accompany the Evans’ lack of passion, whereas unconventional, sometimes panning shots parallel the Linden’s shifting affections and animosity. As tempers are subdued and passions similarly wane, these four characters find themselves no longer able to avoid their problems. The cheating and lying that goes on is not strong enough to hold down the reality bubbling up to the surface.
The characters create drama in their lives to upset the certainty they have found in money and family life. With certainty comes monotony and unrest. The excitement they seek cannot possibly live up to their expectations, short term as they may be. In the end, this is a story about love, the substitutes for it and the distractions from it, which ultimately cannot withhold it. It is this wisdom that the movie imparts, that makes the melancholy aspects of the story worth watching after all.
