"In the Bedroom"

Small-town life erupts in this deceptively calm, emotionally shocking thriller from director Todd Field.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Nov 21, 2001 | "In the Bedroom" is a movie about life in charming wood-frame houses that could use a paint job, a movie in which the parish priest shows up for a backyard barbecue and jokes to the men present, "If I don't see you fellows here, I don't get to see you at all." On the surface, it's another representative of the kind of low-key American realism that has been gaining a renewed currency in the film world; think "The Perfect Storm" without that big wave, or "You Can Count on Me" transferred to the coast of Maine.

There were moments when this debut film from director Todd Field (previously known as a supporting player; he was the jazz pianist in "Eyes Wide Shut") irritated me as much as it impressed me. Its dialogue has a searching, overly earnest quality and its pace sometimes plods. But even the plodding has the dreadful certainty of an iron-shod monster pursuing you in a dream. For all its flaws, "In the Bedroom" is an unusual accomplishment, a serious drama about violence and morality that plays out with a fatalistic intensity somewhere between Greek tragedy and film noir.

Even the film's title, as we learn in one of its first scenes, is primarily a metaphor for imprisonment and death, and only a glancing reference to sex or matrimony: The "bedroom" is the innermost chamber of a lobster trap. Fresh-faced Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl), a college graduate bound for architecture school, has taken up his grandfather's trade as a lobsterman for the summer and is toying with the idea of sticking it out for a while. Frank's romantic vision of the traditional life in his hometown of Camden, Maine, is also influenced by his liaison with Natalie (Marisa Tomei), a 30-ish single mom with a working-class Down East accent and some unfinished business with her estranged husband Richard (William Mapother).

One of the distinguishing characteristics of "In the Bedroom" is that Field's focus is not on this unstable triangle but on Frank's parents, Matt (Tom Wilkinson), a prominent Camden doctor, and Ruth (Sissy Spacek), who teaches choral singing at the high school. While the spacious and unhurried nature of Field's directing isn't always a plus, it allows this extraordinary pair of actors -- with something like 50 years of combined stage, screen and television experience between them -- to create a compelling portrait of a profoundly damaged middle-class marriage that may, just, be redeemable.

Many of us in the viewing audience will feel that we know Matt and Ruth, almost literally: They are distracted small-town Democrats with rumpled clothes and high-middlebrow cultural taste who own an old TV and a slightly ramshackle house although they could certainly afford better. Their view of Natalie is fundamentally informed by class, as much as they might like to pretend otherwise. Matt certainly sees the allure of this married woman with the luscious brown eyes, two kids and murky emotional history; in fact, he may see it a little too clearly. For Ruth, who is more than a tiny bit jealous and protective of her only son, Natalie is a needless and dangerous complication.

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