In the Bedroom

In a small Maine fishing village, a summer romance between a college student (Nick Stahl) and an older woman (Marisa Tomei) takes a dangerous turn when her estranged husband (William Mapother) wants to reconcile. Adapted from Andre Dubus’ story Killings by Robert Festinger and director Todd Field, the film is seen through the eyes of the young man’s parents (Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson)—she tense and disapproving, he wary but mildly envious. When tragedy erupts, their quiet lives are mangled by the gnashing of repressed New England anger and pain. Field’s fine direction gives the dimensions of a waking nightmare to what might have been an overwrought melodrama, and the film is so intensely low-key that violence, when it comes, is shocking and terrible. Spacek and Wilkinson are brilliant.