We Don’t Live Here Anymore

Two college professors (Mark Ruffalo and Peter Krause) and their wives (Laura Dern and Naomi Watts) try to relieve the boredom of their respective marriages with a complex, diffident dance of adultery, suspicion, squabbling and indifference—sometimes feigned and sometimes real. Written by Larry Gross (from stories by Andre Dubus) and directed by John Curran, the film never seems to get its act together. In the central role, Ruffalo is dull and passionless—whether it’s the character or the actor hardly matters; the dullness carries over into all the movie’s relationships. Ruffalo and Krause are supposedly best friends, but they don’t even seem to like each other. Is this a deliberate subtext or just a lack of rapport between the actors? We don’t know and can’t care; they’re just a bunch of selfish whiners anyway.