Marisa Tomei Movie:

				Salesrank: 211758
		Used Price: $26.97
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
When a film with such emotional resonance and visual poise as In the Bedroom makes it to the screen, it seems an unexpected gift meant to remind us of the medium's possibility for sensitivity and epiphany. First-time director Todd Field, who adapted the film from a story by Andre Dubus with screenwriter Rob Festinger, quietly observes the loss, rage, and inexorable desire for revenge that follows the murder of a 21-year-old son. The film opens with Frank (Nick Stahl), back from college for the summer, taking up with Natalie (Marisa Tomei), a slightly older, sexually alluring woman with two boys and an estranged husband prone to violence. It is the tender portrayal of love between Frank and his parents, even as Frank and Natalie's relationship reveals the prejudices of all involved, that makes the subsequent anguish of the film so acute. Matt and Ruth Fowler (Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek), middle-class denizens of a Maine lobster town where everyone knows each other, toil through weeks of devastation and blame following Frank's murder before their outrage obliterates all else. Field's exact handling of jealousy, class division, and grief is abetted by career-highlight performances from Wilkinson and Spacek. In the Bedroom is, along with You Can Count On Me, one of the best American dramas to grace the new millennium so far. --Fionn Meade

In the Bedroom [Region 2] Reviews:
Powerful, Moving, No Easy Answers
2009-11-21 - "In the Bedroom" (2002) is a tragedy that takes place amid a beckoning and idyllic Maine landscape. In the small town of Camden the father, Matt Fowler (Tom Wilkinson), is a medical doctor, the mother, Ruth (Sissy Spacek) is a chorus teacher in the local high school.
Apparently the paternal grandfather had been a lobsterman. Matt and Ruth's son, Frank, has taken up lobstering to make extra money, and because it's in the family blood. He's bought a boat and goes out each day to pull in the traps. Lobstering has skipped a generation, but the father still yearns to go out to sea and be part of the family tradition. The son has a promising future in college, and has architectural talents.
Frank has fallen in love with an older woman, Natalie (Marisa Tomei) separated from her abusive husband, not yet divorced, with two young children. Her husband, Richard Strout, is the scion of the Strout Canning Company, apparently the town's main employer. In the small town it's difficult to get away from the past, and the canning company is a constant presence.
In a fateful scene Frank gets killed. Think of it as a classical tragedy: the prince has been killed. The king and queen are grieving, distraught. The death is driving them further and further apart. They grieve deeply over their dead son, but they grieve separately. They cannot join each other in their sorrow because each blames the other for what has happened.
What they say to each other in their big blow-up has truth on both sides. Has the mother been too strict, too much of a controller? At times is she like Lady Macbeth? Has the father been too indulgent? Has he had a tendency to look the other way when it came to the son? Has he been envious of his son? Has he been weak and capable of being manipulated?
The movie carefully reveals the fault lines in the lives of the Fowlers. Viewers will have a difficult time anticipating where the movie is heading, but the director wants viewers to focus on the characters of the father and mother as determinants of the plot's direction. There are no easy answers, only moral dilemmas.
This film has great cinematography and editing. The acting is superb. It's full of a lot of prosaic details that make it very real and believable. The movie builds meticulously and carefully to a powerful ending. Don't miss the concluding scenes because they'll haunt you.



Messy in a good way
2009-05-19 - Although I wouldn't call this film "realistic" per se, what it does is evoke the complicated and messy nature of emotions and relationships. And it does so by touching on the most absolutely messy and complicated issues in life: family, romance, death, class, revenge, and sex.

With an intense script and a group of absolutely powerhouse actors at his disposal, the director wisely keeps the direction elegant and subtle. By never falling into triteness or heavy-handedness, he let's the actors do what they all do best: create living, breathing, devastating, tragic, and human characters that the audience can relate to.

Refreshingly Satisfying Ending
2009-03-28 - I'm sure this review will get sent to the end of 258 current reviews and no one will read it, BUT, it's a great one to watch if you're in a quiet, unhurried mood as this movie moves at almost real-life speed.

However, if you can get through to the end, anyone who has lost a loved one to homicide will be greatly satisfied by the uncompromising end (won't spoil it here.) In fact, I admantly HATED this movie the first time I saw it, however, it kept calling me back and I came to love it. I especially love the end as it vindicates all departed individuals whose murderers sit breathing for life in prisons instead of eye for an eye punishment being meted out.

I'm sure someone has mentioned the fact that the actor William Mapother who plays Richard must be a Tom Cruise cousin. Looks just like him and that is Cruise's actual surname. He did a very adequate job of making us hate him.

Very adult, but slow, give it a chance.

A rather languorous film that just didn't add up
2008-12-15 - With this many reviews, the basic plot has been examined as well as the main characters. A husband and wife lose their son to a murder, and the murderer is out on bail, still running into the parents, friends and family of the victim.

So, they decided (finally) to take matters into their own hands. Never mind they leave so many loose ends it's going to lead back to them in about 15 minutes, perhaps they can accept going to prison to make sure their son's killer doesn't get away with murder.

I'm not buying it. Why go against everything you've stood for your whole life by giving into the same impulses? Doesn't make any sense.

As for the killer, he should have known you NEVER get into a car with anyone with a gun. You run, shouting Fire!, Fire!. That's your best bet. Otherwise, the gunman controls where you go and how you end up.

Interesting only for the wonderful atmospherics of the Maine location. Makes me long for another visit.

"Did you do it?"
2008-10-18 - As the story opens in a Maine lobster town, we meet young Matt Fowler, home from college for the summer, who has fallen in love with an older divorcee with two children. Although Matt says it's not serious, his parents are worried. And the woman's ex-husband is a violent man.

The title, "In the Bedroom," refers not to torrid love scenes but is slang for "in a lobster trap;" early on we learn that if two male lobsters are "in the bedroom" with a female, the males will tear each other apart. That's the plot, in a nutshell. Tom Wilkerson and Sissy Spacek play Matt's parents; he's good in a stiff-upper-lip way, but she still looks like Carrie to me and didn't ring true. William Mapother ("Ethan" in Lost) is absolutely chilling as the brutal ex-husband.

While the grieving process is honestly portrayed with its silences, recriminations, and desire for revenge, I felt the impact was lessened by the complete lack of background music. The pain that the parents go through just wasn't real enough to really touch me. 3.5 stars.